A PRISON to-day is like a coral. Set voiceless in cells lie still so many lives on all its frontiers wash the songs of tides and listening when the stones move, out of sight hearing the sea coming and going out year upon year, not knowing night from day they wake between the walls that they have made they build a weapon of their punishment parted by inches from the bright gull’s freedom and all the tangible colours of the pools Silence and repetition wear away the shapes of living, and a woman is a blurring photograph, and company an invisible finger tapping on a wall. Only the single light which each life keeps, the fire of disobedience, lies awake and the dark head of coral, packed with men glows like a round lamp in the darkening sea grows till it breaks the back of some foul ship and spills to drown its crew of murderers.