for mr thomas

Van Morrison

From faded newsprint used to wrap a fish
Inscrutably the muse selects your face
As I sit drinking famously in an Irish bar
Five thousand miles and thirty years away

With the usual ceremonial you were crowned one night
King of the field where doctors nail the cows
To make of the cock's quill the rights of language
And the pricking heart a sword against the hours

Let smirking scholars writhe in their favourite bondage
And hold you plaintiff to the charge of art
Exhibit A: he falls on legendary lines
Singing mother I don't want a pain here in my heart

The judge in me sucks eggs and jerks the sacred meat
But the boy in me still dreams in Milk Wood town
Like two provincial bastards playing the galleries
I hold your photo to a mirror upside down

And as bacon wafts through hungry streets, your ghost pervades
Just like an old ex-boxer aged twenty two
Staged-up like Falstaff or the wild welsh Rimbaud
You'd laugh to see the monograms they make of you
Ah, Mr. Thomas let us ramble through the midnight fair
Let us throw old bottles at the ferris wheel
Let us paint library on the library let us raid the moonlight
Let us steal whatever we are supposed to steal

Let us watch while the days grow daily more mundane
That rough God go riding with his shears
Hack wide the belly of the swollen mountains
And rip molten heroes forth from their furious tears

Oh, Mr. Thomas, oh, Mr. Thomas,
Let us steal whatever we're supposed to steal
Mr. Thomas, oh, Mr. Thomas,
Why don't we feel whatever we're supposed to feel

Oh, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Thomas,
Why don't we feel whatever we're supposed to feel
Oh, Mr. Thomas let us ramble through the midnight
Let us throw bottles at the ferris wheel
Let us paint library on the library let us raid the moonlight
Let us steal whatever we're supposed to steal