If Death Shall Come Forth to My Side

(Finished text; shown at the Dylan Thomas Festival in Wales.)



If death shall come forth to my side
Take me by the hand, and lead me where you are,
Would you ask me to stay, and wait behind?
Would you tell me not to go gentle into that good night?
But our feet shall linger upon the Elysian Fields,
And you’ll be king among the flowers,
Prince among the horses of the riders of our doom,
And I shall dance by the lover’s tomb (a Fern Hill queen!)
Under a proud, silent, raging moon,
Fairy demons glide, carrying our names—
Under a shower of all these tortured years—
Here, in the dominion of the shadow
Where we shall wait,
Wait—
Rage—
Rage as flores ansiadas, et poètes maudites,
Expect our father, there on the sad height,
To either curse or bless with his fierce acid rain tears,
On the winged creatures carrying
The day, the October night
When the towering dead, broken, as one
Laid their last blood-red breath upon the land—
And softly joined the dying of the light.