When once the twilight locks no longer



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 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 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; T

he fences of the light are down, 

All but the brisket riders thrown, 

And worlds hang on the trees.

Dylan Thomas