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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
