Lyrics
Words For The Dying
- There Was A Saviour
- On A Wedding Anniversary
- Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
- Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
- The Soul of Carmen Miranda
There Was A Saviour
Words: Dylan Thomas
There was a saviour
Rarer than radium,
Commoner than water, crueler than truth;
Children kept from the sun
Assembled at his tongue
To hear the golden note turn in a groove,
Prisoners of wishes locked their eyes
In the jails and studies of his keyless smiles.
The voice of children says
From a lost wilderness
There was calm to be done in his safe unrest
When hindering man hurt
Man, animal or bird
We hid our fears in the murdering breath,
Silence, silence to do, when the earth grew loud,
In lairs and asylums of the tremendous shout.
There was glory to hear
In the churches of his tears,
Under his downy arm you sighed as he struck,
O you who could not cry
On to the ground when a man died
Put a tear for joy in the unearthly flood
And laid your cheek against a cloud-formed shell:
Now in the dark there is only yourself and myself.
Two proud, blacked brothers cry,
Winter-locked side by side,
To this inhospitable hollow year,
O we could not stir
One lean sigh when we heard
Greed on man beating near and fire neighbour
But wailed and nested in the sky-blue wall
Now break a giant tear for the little known fall.
For the drooping of homes,
That did not nurse our bones,
Brave deaths of only ones but never found,
Now see, alone in us,
Our own true strangers' dust
Ride through the doors of our unentered house.
Exiled in us we arouse the soft,
Unclenched, armless, silk and rough love that breaks all rocks.
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On A Wedding Anniversary
Words: Dylan Thomas
The sky is torn across
This ragged anniversary of two
Who moved for three years in tune
Down the long walks of their vows.
Now their love lies a loss
And Love and his patients roar on a chain;
From every true or crater
Carrying cloud. Death strikes their house.
Too late in the wrong rain
They come together whom their love parted:
The windows pour into their heart
And the doors burn in their brain.
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Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Words: Dylan Thomas
Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.
Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound
And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing
The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.
Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell,
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.
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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Words: Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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The Soul of Carmen Miranda
Since the soul of Carmen Miranda had captured the mind of man
Dismissed with her generation for the price of a can-can
Consigned to the sideshows of history, with the patronized orphans of film
She seeded the bait and offered the faint hope of chance to innocent men
In love with the trance of her dances
And abandoned by them
And abandoned by them
She called in the boys
She remembered their names, and the sorry condition they came in
The dances were soiled, they spun and recoiled
From the master tapdancer inside them, beside them
The soul of Carmen Miranda had captured the mind of man
Dismissed with her generation for the price of a can-can
The soul of Carmen Miranda for the price of a can-can
The soul of Carmen Miranda for the price of a can-can