love & doubt

NEVER TO REACH THE OBLIVIOUS DARK

Dylan Thomas

Never to reach the oblivious dark
And not to know
Any man's troubles nor your own—
Negatives impress negation,
Empty of light and find the darkness lit—
Never is nightmare,
Never flows out from the wound of sleep
Staining the broken brain
With knowledge that no use and nothing worth
Still's vain to argue after death;
No use to run your head against the wall
To find a sweet blankness in the blood and shell,
This pus runs deep.
There's poison in your red wine, drinker,
Which spreads down to the dregs
Leaving a corrupted vein of colour,
Sawdust beneath the skirts;
On every hand the evil's positive
For dead or live,
Froth or a moment's movement
All hold the sum, nothing to nothing,
Even the words are nothing
While the sun's turned to salt,
Can be but vanity, such an old cry,
Nothing never, nothing older
Though we're consumed by loves and doubts.
I love and doubt, it's vain, it's vain,
Loving and doubting like one who is to die
Planning what's good, though it's but winter,
When spring is come,
The jonquil and the trumpet.