Oubliette


A mind I feel.
A heart.
Two feet upon the stair.
    I await you here a mile below.

Your steps falter,
grow steady on each landing,
hesitate at each brink of dark.
    Descend.

What is it you carry,
Beside the burning torch
that turns your fears to flitting chills
who squeak just out of sight
with bloodied jaws?
    And lead you down.

Food for me?
But what feeds my life
cannot be what you carry,
cured and cold and safely wrapped.
What it is you cannot know
You think you know but dare not name
    And descend the stair

At the next turn you leave the torch.
No one may bring me light.
By now your feet know the steps.
They carry you down, while
this midday dark presses over your eyes
dries your mouth, fills your throat.
Your heart hammers its bony cage,
desperate for light.
    Still down you come

The floor betrays your foot.
Where it wanted a step
instead finds stone,
lengths of chain,
wet fragments.
Through your mouth the dark rasps back and forth .
Against the wall you crouch,
shoulders raised, useless eyes wide-staring,
ears deafened by your blood and breath,
straining to feel, to taste, to smell
a silent approach, a crouch to spring, a slow embrace.
    There you wait.

How will it start?
Shall we talk of claws and fangs and opening wounds
Of sunsets and sparrows and golden, windblown leaves?
Of burning and tearing, crunch and swallow
White flakes of fear and drops of lucent hate
Blasts of love that freeze flesh into stone?
    Can you speak of these?
    And what lies further down?

For you will not see the light again.
Whatever labours up those steps
with your staring eyes and whitened hair
will convulse at the soaring flight of a swan
will look upon a cloud with awe
and dread the opening of a bloom

Now you stir.
“What are you waiting for?”
Your whimpers grow familiar words.
“Get it over with,” you say, and “Do your worst,” and
“I know what you are.”

I know you too.

It is time to meet.