For Mr. Thomas

From faded newsprint used to wrap a fish

Inscrutably the muse selects your face

As I sit drinking famously in an Irish bar

Five thousand miles and thirty years away

With the usual ceremonial you were crowned one night

King of the field where doctors nail the cows

To make of the cock's quill the rights of language

And the pricking heart a sword against the hours

Let smirking scholars writhe in their favourite bondage

And hold you plaintiff to the charge of art

Exhibit A: he falls on legendary lines

Singing mother I don't want a pain here in my heart

The judge in me sucks eggs and jerks the sacred meat

But the boy in me still dreams in Milk Wood town

Like two provincial bastards playing the galleries

I hold your photo to a mirror upside down

And as bacon wafts through hungry streets, your ghost pervades

Just like an old ex-boxer aged twenty two

Staged-up like Falstaff or the wild welsh Rimbaud

You'd laugh to see the monograms they make of you

Ah, Mr. Thomas let us ramble through the midnight fair

Let us throw old bottles at the ferris wheel

Let us paint library on the library let us raid the moonlight

Let us steal whatever we are supposed to steal

Let us watch while the days grow daily more mundane

That rough God go riding with his shears

Hack wide the belly of the swollen mountains

And rip molten heroes forth from their furious tears

Oh, Mr. Thomas, oh, Mr. Thomas,

Let us steal whatever we're supposed to steal

Mr. Thomas, oh, Mr. Thomas,

Why don't we feel whatever we're supposed to feel

Oh, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Thomas,

Why don't we feel whatever we're supposed to feel

Oh, Mr. Thomas let us ramble through the midnight

Let us throw bottles at the ferris wheel

Let us paint library on the library let us raid the moonlight

Let us steal whatever we're supposed to steal