‘Find meat on bones that soon have none,
And drink in the two milked crags,
The merriest marrow and the dregs
Before the ladies’ breasts are hags
And the limbs are torn.
Disturb no winding-sheets, my son,
But when the ladies are cold as stone
Then hang a ram rose over the rags.

‘Rebel against the binding moon 
And the parliament of sky,
The kingcrafts of the wicked sea,
Autocracy of night and day,
Dictatorship of sun.
Rebel against the flesh and bone,
The word of the blood, the wily skin,
And the maggot no man can slay.’

‘The thirst is quenched, the hunger gone,
And my heart is cracked across;
My face is haggard in the glass,
My lips are withered with a kiss,
My breasts are thin.
A merry girl took me for man,
I laid her down and told her sin,
And put beside her a ram rose.

‘The maggot that no man can kill
And the man no rope can hang
Rebel against my father’s dream
That out of a bower of red swine
Howls the foul fiend to heel.
I cannot murder, like a fool,
Season and sunshine, grace and girl,
Nor can I smother the sweet waking.’

Black night still ministers the moon,
And the sky lays down her laws,
The sea speaks in a kingly voice,
Light and dark are no enemies
But one companion.
‘War on the spider and the wren!
War on the destiny of man!
Doom on the sun!’
Before death takes you, O take back this.

We have the fairy tales by heart,
No longer tremble at a bishop’s hat,
And the thunder’s first note;
We have these little things off pat,
Avoid church as a rat;
We scorn the juggernaut,
And the great wheels’ rut;
Half of the old gang’s shot,
Thank God, but the enemy stays put.

We know our Mother Goose and Eden,
No longer fear the walker in the garden,
And the fibs for children;
The old spells are undone.
But still ghosts madden,
A cupboard skeleton
Raises the hairs of lad and maiden.

If dead men walked they, too, would holler 
At sight of death, the last two fisted killer
Stained a blood colour;
A panic’s pallor
Would turn the dead yellow.

We have by heart the children’s stories,
Have blown sky high the nursery of fairies;
Still a world of furies
Burns in many mirrors.

Death and evil are twin spectres.
What shall destruction count if these are fixtures?
Why blot the pictures
Of elves and satyrs
If these two gnomes remain unmoved by strictures?

We have the stories backwards,
Torn out magic from the hearts of cowards
By nape and gizzards;
There are two laggards,
Death and evil, too slow in heeding words.

Tear by the roots these twin growths in your gut;
Shall we learn fairy tales off pat,
Not benefit from that?
Burn out the lasting rot,
Fear death as little as the thunder’s shot,
The holy hat.