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When once the twilight locks no longer Locked in the long worm of my finger Nor damned the sea that sped about my fist, The mouth of time sucked, like a sponge, The milky acid on each hinge, And swallowed dry the waters of the breast. When the galactic sea was sucked And all the dry seabed unlocked, I sent my creature scouting on the globe, That globe itself of hair and bone That, sewn to me by nerve and brain, Had stringed my flask of matter to his rib. My fuses are timed to charge his heart, He blew like powder to the light And held a little sabbath with the sun, But when the stars, assuming shape, Drew in his eyes the straws of sleep He drowned his father’s magics in a dream. All issue armoured, of the grave, The redhaired cancer still alive, The cataracted eyes that filmed their cloth; Some dead undid their bushy jaws, And bags of blood let out their flies; He had by heart the Christ-cross-row of death. Sleep navigates the tides of time; The dry Sargasso of the tomb Gives up its dead to such a working sea; And sleep rolls mute above the beds Where fishes’ food is fed the shades Who periscope through flowers to the sky. When once the twilight screws were turned, And mother milk was stiff as sand, I sent my own ambassador to light; By trick or chance he fell asleep And conjured up a carcass shape To rob me of my fluids in his heart. Awake, my sleeper, to the sun, A worker in the morning town, And leave the poppied pickthank where he lies; The fences of the light are down, All but the briskest riders thrown And worlds hang on the trees.
Dylan Thomas’s other poems:
