Thisbe and Pyramus

When Thisbe bends down her ear to the wall,

strains as if to hear lilt of melody

from Pyramus, his sounding trumpet dies,

blast onward flows to lover’s labile call.

Grey heron’s harsh note flies over the springs,

moon rises, a lucid petal in white,

then lovers are prophets on beams of night,

and the nymph opens tepid mouth to sing.

Then token in the realm of regal love

would find its meaning, clothed in worm-spun silk,

and in its garments, a hand in pocket

finds another finite hand, beauty does

render all words mute, and turns ice to milk,

the warmth of fading summer’s gold locket.

 

Then Thisbe put her fingers to the crack,

ensured she’d tear apart restraining wall,

if lovers, human-distanced in their calls,

could not mulberry tree find, but barrack.

Her Pyramus, his water upwards springs

when separated from her in lines lost

to earth, a concentration camp, the cost

of forcible star on their coats: sprout wings

and fly away then from that barren place,

Babylon where lovers are in prisons

of time and chance and parentage, not lust,

where mouths, red roses, could not kiss nor taste,

up the figurative wall have risen,

river petals streaming in heron dust.

Emily Isaacson

Image: Thisbe by J.W. Waterhouse