New Walk, prison

"We walked past low workhouses in their thick fabric cloaks. A factory suddenly whistled like the scream of a woman being attacked. Large gates opened under a mad lantern light: human masses surged out, women and men intertwined. Hastily, their clogs clattered. Here and there, in the darkness, the glowing ember of a pipe being lit bloomed. A raw cry echoed; a miaow like that of a tiger cat answered: a declaration of love, in obscene imagery, that a spinner from afar reproached his girl, a whirler... – We stepped quickly. Now the water lay desolate again, always the water, the eternal water and its invisible burden of soggy-heavy clumps full of unknown life and certain death. (...) In the distance, we saw, heavily blocked against the blurry blending of the city light, the prison like a dark palace for giants, its battlements like hard molars against the greenish-hued sky." (The clay towers)

Literair Gent