Then was my neophyte, <br />Child in white blood bent on its knees <br />Under the bell of rocks, <br />Ducked in the twelve, disciple seas <br />The winder of the water-clocks <br />Calls a green day and night. <br />My sea hermaphrodite, <br />Snail of man in His ship of fires <br />That burn the bitten decks, <br />Knew all His horrible desires <br />The climber of the water sex <br />Calls the green rock of light. <br /> <br />Who in these labyrinths, <br />This tidethread and the lane of scales, <br />Twine in a moon-blown shell, <br />Escapes to the flat cities' sails <br />Furled on the fishes' house and hell, <br />Nor falls to His green myths? <br />Stretch the salt photographs, <br />The landscape grief, love in His oils <br />Mirror from man to whale <br />That the green child see like a grail <br />Through veil and fin and fire and coil <br />Time on the canvas paths. <br /> <br />He films my vanity. <br />Shot in the wind, by tilted arcs, <br />Over the water come <br />Children from homes and children's parks <br />Who speak on a finger and thumb, <br />And the masked, headless boy. <br />His reels and mystery <br />The winder of the clockwise scene <br />Wound like a ball of lakes <br />Then threw on that tide-hoisted screen <br />Love's image till my heartbone breaks <br />By a dramatic sea. <br /> <br />Who kills my history? <br />The year-hedged row is lame with flint, <br />Blunt scythe and water blade. <br />'Who could snap off the shapeless print <br />From your to-morrow-treading shade <br />With oracle for eye?' <br />Time kills me terribly. <br />'Time shall not murder you,' He said, <br />'Nor the green nought be hurt; <br />Who could hack out your unsucked heart, <br />O green and unborn and undead?' <br />I saw time murder me.<br /><br />Dylan Thomas<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/then-was-my-neophyte/
