Poems

Beloved

Like a bedridden patient

unable to venture
beyond mattress and pillow,
forbidden anything but a visitor,
 
I burn inside.
I can’t imbibe water.
I can’t eat bread.
My lips have been sealed shut.
 
Many days I’ve bestowed
on battling with what’s best,
no page has been unturned
in a bid to find my fate.
 
Beyond, others slumber soundly
in the night’s blackness
but I engage in barren arguments,
bicker with each day’s events.
 
I find best wishes tasteless.
I can’t be pleased by social niceties.
I feel so phobic,
I like loneliness better,
ambling aimlessly through plains.
 
My heart belongs to him.
His love has beaten me.
I am under such bewitchment
I blanch at social gatherings,
I hold myself back.
 
My bearing and discretion,
all that’s visible and audible
has been blunted
as I beseech in the wilderness.
 
I walk the brutal stony land,
bear the burning heat of sand
and ramble about 
under the blasting sun
blind to my destination.
 
Many times I’ve been lost
and fallen into an abyss
risked my life in this bid,
got into bad situations.
 
All the winged birds,
brute animals, game animals,
the blond-coloured lion,
the blotched leopard,
the wider kin of wild beasts,
I settle with them in the open land and the bush.
 
The blows that I suffer,
the blues that hang over me,
the withering body
would be long gone 
O Beloved, with the sight of you.
 
I observe my thirst,
my heart not functioning as before,
my lips benumbed,
my eyes blinking.
 
You’re admired by men,
a brave hero.
Be my new moon –
unbreakable metal,
the desire of my being,
the best of all souls.
 
What comfort it would be 
to hear that bright news.
Such balm to welcome you,
to abate the anxiety –
to behold you.
When, Beloved, will that be?