Come closer to wet my lips

William Blake- Jacob's Ladder


Poetry


Come closer to wet my lips

What’s scaring you rigid my love?
Is it the thundering rain in the forest?

What’s making you hold your breath?

Is it a deep thirst?
A parched thing
You cannot quench?

That noise you hear-
Are the Masters and Slaves calling to each other
From the water’s edge.

That river is Styx, The Jordan
It’s next to Jacob’s Ladder
And that poor unemployed sweet chariot

All this is for those who can see.

They call to each other
Kindred spirits mauling
Each other for all time-

But what's it to you
You don't want to go.

See how you cling my love?
So hold fast-

Those shots you hear
Are barking deer and their sighing after-
That laughter-
Is the mad call of jackals.

That disturbance in the thicket
Is owl flap in the dark.

There is no one with a scythe in the shadows
That sharp moonlight
On the courtyard
Is clean.

There are no pounding hooves
coming for you across the cobbles
That is blood in your temples
Yes but
No one’s coming to get you!

What you hear may be rumblings
Just me stumbling-

That crackling is not from a fire
No blaze here-
No pyre.

That tumbling pine
Is not going to a carnage
To build it higher

And that pine scent-
Is not from its destruction.

You can pull this fear apart my love
And in its folds
Find bliss.

There is no call to hurtle
Twisting around corners
Myrtle Myrtle-
Your dead grandmother named you.


You can put your small hand
On my heart
See-

There is nothing
Nothing breaking out of its cage
Beating steady as a sage.

You can make it pound Myrtle
Anytime,tonight-

But come to me together
And come closer to wet my lips.

20th October 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee 2009