If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Love - Dylan Thomas

If I were tickled by the rub of love

A rooking girl who stole me for her side

Broke through her straws breaking my bandaged string

If the red tickle as the cattle calve

Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung

I would not fear the apple nor the flood

Nor the bad blood of spring

Shall it be male or female

Say the cells

And drop the plum like fire from the flesh

If I were tickled by the hatching hair

The winging bone that sprouted in the heels

The itch of man upon the baby's thigh

I would not fear the gallows nor the axe

Nor the crossed sticks of war

Shall it be male or female

Say the fingers

That chalk the walls with green girls and their men

I would not fear the muscling-in of love

If I were tickled by the urchin hungers

Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve

I would not fear the devil in the loin

Nor the outspoken grave

If I were tickled by the lovers' rub

That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock

Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws

Time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib

Would leave me cold as butter for the flies

The sea of scums could drown me as it broke

Dead on the sweethearts' toes

This world is half the devil's and my own

Daft with the ** that's smoking in a girl

And curling round the bud that forks her eye

An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone

And all the herrings smelling in the sea

I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail

Wearing the quick away

And that's the rub the only rub that tickles

The knobbly ape that swings along his sex

From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist

Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle

Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast

Of loever mother lovers or his six

Feet in the rubbing dust

And what's the rub

Death's feather on the nerve

Your mouth my love the thistle in the kiss

My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree

The words of death are dryer than his stiff

My wordy wounds are printed with your hair

I would be tickled by the rub that is

Man be my metaphor