See, says the lime
by Dylan Thomas
See, says the lime, my wicked milks
I put round ribs that packed their heart,
And elbowed veins that, nudging blood,
Roused it to fire;
Once in this clay fenced by the sticks
That starry fence the clay of light
The howling spirit shaped a god
Of death’s undoer.
On these blue lips, the lime remarks,
The wind of kisses sealed a pact
That leaping veins threw to the wind
And brains turned sour;
The blood got up as red as wax
As kisses froze the waxing thought,
The spirit racked its muscles and
The loins cried murder.
The strings of fire choked his sex
And tied an iris in his throat
To burst into a hanging land
Where flesh’s fever
Itched on the hangman’s silks;
The brains of death undid the knot
Before the blood and flame were twined
In love’s last collar.
See, says the lime, around these wrecks
Of growing bones the muscles slid ;
I chalked upon the breastbone’s slate
And ran a river
Up through the fingers’ cracks;
The milk of death, I filled the hand
That drove my stuff through skin and gut;
Death’s death’s undoer.