Dylan Thomas

A Grief Ago

A grief ago,

She who was who I hold, the fats and the flower,

Or, water-lammed, from the scythe-sided thorn,

Hell wind and sea,

A stem cementing, wrestled up the tower,

Rose maid and male,

Or, master venus, through the paddler's bowl

Sailed up the sun;

 

Who is my grief,

A chrysalis unwrinkling on the iron,

Wrenched by my fingerman, the leaden bud

Shot through the leaf,

Was who was folded on the rod the aaron

Road east to plague,

The horn and ball of water on the frog

Housed in the side.

 

And she who lies,

Like exodus a chapter from the garden,

Brand of the lily's anger on her ring,

Tugged through the days

Her ropes of heritage, the wars of pardon,

On field and sand

The twelve triangles of the cherub wind

Engraving going.

 

Who then is she,

She holding me? The people's sea drives on her,

Drives out the father from the caesared camp;

The dens of shape

Shape all her whelps with the long voice of water,

That she I have,

The country-handed grave boxed into love,

Rise before dark.

 

The night is near,

A nitric shape that leaps her, time and acid;

I tell her this: before the suncock cast

Her bone to fire,

Let her inhale her dead, through seed and solid

Draw in their seas,

So cross her hand with their grave gipsy eyes,

And close her fist.