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

[ti:If I Were Tickled By the Rub of Love] [ar:Dylan Thomas] [al:Reading His Complete Recorded Poetry] [by:] [offset:0] [00:00.00]If I Were Tickled By the Rub of Love - Dylan Thomas [00:00.30]If I were tickled by the rub of love [00:03.29] [00:04.05]A rooking girl who stole me for her side [00:07.66]Broke through her straws breaking my bandaged string [00:11.82] [00:12.42]If the red tickle as the cattle calve [00:15.62]Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung [00:19.36]I would not fear the apple nor the flood [00:23.43]Nor the bad blood of spring [00:26.09] [00:27.17]Shall it be male or female [00:29.13]Say the cells [00:30.62]And drop the plum like fire from the flesh [00:35.00]If I were tickled by the hatching hair [00:37.95]The winging bone that sprouted in the heels [00:41.12]The itch of man upon the baby's thigh [00:44.70]I would not fear the gallows nor the axe [00:48.31] [00:48.97]Nor the crossed sticks of war [00:51.85] [00:52.68]Shall it be male or female [00:54.64]Say the fingers [00:56.23]That chalk the walls with green girls and their men [01:00.03]I would not fear the muscling-in of love [01:03.33]If I were tickled by the urchin hungers [01:06.29]Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve [01:10.62]I would not fear the devil in the loin [01:13.83]Nor the outspoken grave [01:16.41] [01:17.28]If I were tickled by the lovers' rub [01:19.84]That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock [01:23.29]Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws [01:27.68]Time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib [01:31.96]Would leave me cold as butter for the flies [01:35.29] [01:35.88]The sea of scums could drown me as it broke [01:40.84]Dead on the sweethearts' toes [01:43.69] [01:45.09]This world is half the devil's and my own [01:47.55] [01:48.25]Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl [01:51.02]And curling round the bud that forks her eye [01:54.39] [01:55.45]An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone [02:00.06]And all the herrings smelling in the sea [02:03.45] [02:04.47]I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail [02:08.96] [02:09.86]Wearing the quick away [02:12.31] [02:13.55]And that's the rub the only rub that tickles [02:16.51] [02:17.05]The knobbly ape that swings along his sex [02:20.52]From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist [02:24.45]Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle [02:27.80] [02:28.41]Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast [02:31.77]Of loever mother lovers or his six [02:35.48]Feet in the rubbing dust [02:37.39] [02:38.89]And what's the rub [02:39.86] [02:41.05]Death's feather on the nerve [02:43.13] [02:44.15]Your mouth my love the thistle in the kiss [02:47.93] [02:48.69]My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree [02:53.84] [02:55.14]The words of death are dryer than his stiff [02:59.12]My wordy wounds are printed with your hair [03:02.98] [03:04.82]I would be tickled by the rub that is [03:08.77] [03:10.20]Man be my metaphor