Find Meat On Bones

Find meat on bones that soon have none, And drink in the two milked crags, The merriest marrow and the dregs Before the ladies' breasts are hags And the limbs are torn. Disturb no winding-sheets, my son, But when the ladies are cold as stone Then hang a ram rose over the rags. 'Rebel against the binding moon And the parliament of sky, The kingcrafts of the wicked sea, Autocracy of night and day, Dictatorship of sun. Rebel against the flesh and bone, The word of the blood, the wily skin, And the maggot no man can slay.' 'The thirst is quenched, the hunger gone, And my heart is cracked across; My face is haggard in the glass, My lips are withered with a kiss, My breasts are thin. A merry girl took me for man, I laid her down and told her sin, And put beside her a ram rose. 'The maggot that no man can kill And the man no rope can hang Rebel against my father's dream That out of a bower of red swine Howls the foul fiend to heel. I cannot murder, like a fool, Season and sunshine, grace and girl, Nor can I smother the sweet waking.' Black night still ministers the moon, And the sky lays down her laws, The sea speaks in a kingly voice, Light and dark are no enemies But one companion. 'War on the spider and the wren! War on the destiny of man! Doom on the sun!' Before death takes you, O take back this.