free-verse45 lines
Rabbit Snared In The Night
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)Why do you spurt and sprottle
like that, bunny?
Why should I want to throttle
you, bunny?
Yes, bunch yourself between
my knees and lie still.
Lie on me with a hot, plumb, live weight,
heavy as a stone, passive,
yet hot, waiting.
What are you waiting for?
What are you waiting for?
What is the hot, plumb weight of your desire on me?
You have a hot, unthinkable desire of me, bunny.
What is that spark
glittering at me on the unutterable darkness
of your eye, bunny?
The finest splinter of a spark
that you throw off, straight on the tinder of my nerves!
It sets up a strange fire,
a soft, most unwarrantable burning
a bale-fire mounting, mounting up in me.
'Tis not of me, bunny.
It was you engendered it,
with that fine, demoniacal spark
you jetted off your eye at me.
I did not want it,
this furnace, this draught-maddened fire
which mounts up my arms
making them swell with turgid, ungovernable strength.
'Twas not I that wished it,
that my fingers should turn into these flames
avid and terrible
that they are at this moment.
It must have been your inbreathing, gaping desire
that drew this red gush in me;
I must be reciprocating your vacuous, hideous passion.
It must be the want in you
that has drawn this terrible draught of white fire
up my veins as up a chimney.
It must be you who desire
this intermingling of the black and monstrous fingers of Moloch
in the blood-jets of your throat.
Come, you shall have your desire,
since already I am implicated with you
in your strange lust.