Deaths and Entrances

On almost the incendiary eve
   Of several near deaths,
When one at the great least of your best loved
   And always known must leave
Lions and fires of his flying breath,
   Of your immortal friends
Who’d raise the organs of the counted dust
   To shoot and sing your praise,
One who called deepest down shall hold his peace
   That cannot sink or cease
   Endlessly to his wound
In many married London’s estranging grief.
On almost the incendiary eve
   When at your lips and keys,
Locking, unlocking, the murdered strangers weave,
   One who is most unknown,
Your polestar neighbour, sun of another street,
   Will dive up to his tears.
He’ll bathe his raining blood in the male sea
   Who strode for your own dead
And wind his globe out of your water thread
   And load the throats of shells
   With every cry since light
Flashed first across his thunderclapping eyes.
On almost the incendiary eve
   Of deaths and entrances,
When near and strange wounded on London’s waves
   Have sought your single grave,
One enemy, of many, who knows well
   Your heart is luminous
In the watched dark, quivering through locks and caves,
   Will pull the thunderbolts
To shut the sun, plunge, mount your darkened keys
   And sear just riders back,
   Until that one loved least
Looms the last Samson of your zodiac.

— Dylan Thomas. Deaths and Entrances. 1946.