Altarwise By Owl-Light Poem by Dylan Thomas

Altarwise By Owl-Light

Rating: 3.0


Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrows scream.
Then, penny-eyed, that gentlemen of wounds,
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven's egg,
With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
Scraped at my cradle in a walking word
That night of time under the Christward shelter:
I am the long world's gentlemen, he said,
And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.

Death is all metaphors, shape in one history;
The child that sucketh long is shooting up,
The planet-ducted pelican of circles
Weans on an artery the genders strip;
Child of the short spark in a shapeless country
Soon sets alight a long stick from the cradle;
The horizontal cross-bones of Abaddon,
You by the cavern over the black stairs,
Rung bone and blade, the verticals of Adam,
And, manned by midnight, Jacob to the stars.
Hairs of your head, then said the hollow agent,
Are but the roots of nettles and feathers
Over the groundworks thrusting through a pavement
And hemlock-headed in the wood of weathers.

First there was the lamb on knocking knees
And three dead seasons on a climbing grave
That Adam's wether in the flock of horns,
Butt of the tree-tailed worm that mounted Eve,
Horned down with skullfoot and the skull of toes
On thunderous pavements in the garden of time;
Rip of the vaults, I took my marrow-ladle
Out of the wrinkled undertaker's van,
And, Rip Van Winkle from a timeless cradle,
Dipped me breast-deep in the descending bone;
The black ram, shuffling of the year, old winter,
Alone alive among his mutton fold,
We rung our weathering changes on the ladder,
Said the antipodes, and twice spring chimed.

What is the metre of the dictionary?
The size of genesis? the short spark's gender?
Shade without shape? the shape of the Pharaohs echo?
(My shape of age nagging the wounded whisper.)
Which sixth of wind blew out the burning gentry?
(Questions are hunchbacks to the poker marrow.)
What of a bamboo man amomg your acres?
Corset the boneyards for a crooked boy?
Button your bodice on a hump of splinters,
My camel's eyes will needle through the shroud.
Loves reflection of the mushroom features,
Still snapped by night in the bread-sided field,
Once close-up smiling in the wall of pictures,
Arc-lamped thrown back upon the cutting flood.

Friday, January 3, 2003
Topic(s) of this poem: life
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Brian Jani 26 April 2014

Awesome I like this poem, check mine oit

2 3 Reply
delilah contrapunctal 19 May 2015

musical brilliance/gorgeous humor.....what a joy to read thomas

3 0 Reply
martin seligman 10 July 2022

It is not particularly obscure. Is a trip through the constellations have night beginning with Altaire.

0 0 Reply
whatriveristhis 03 November 2021

Obscure pointless . He even admitted in a letter (I forget to whom) that he tried to make his poems as difficult to understand as possible. Wanker.

0 0 Reply
whatriveristhis 03 November 2021

Obscure pointless , He even admitted in a letter (I forget to whom) that he purposely tried to make his poems as difficult to understand as possible. Why? ? ? ? To sum up...Wanker.

0 0 Reply
Ratnakar Mandlik 27 October 2016

The Atlas eater with a jaw for news Stunning write. Thanks for sharing it here.

1 0 Reply
Susan Williams 05 January 2016

It's like crucial moments in history, both Christian and secular, are woven and interwoven and mingled with sexuality and the genesis of words and... whew! there are a lot of moments of time, past, present, and future melded together here:

25 0 Reply
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Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Swansea / Wales
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