Lyrics If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Your Love - Dylan Thomas

If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Your Love - Dylan Thomas
Song information On this page you can find the lyrics of the song If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Your Love, artist - Dylan Thomas.
Date of issue: 24.01.2019
Song language: English

If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Your Love

If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.
Shall it be male or female?
say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby’s thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.
Shall it be male or female?
say the fingers
That chalk the walls with green girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the loin
Nor the outspoken grave.
If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow’s-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies,
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.
This world is half the devil’s and my own,
Daft with the drug that’s smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man’s shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.
And that’s the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his sex
From damp love-darkness and the nurse’s twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of loever, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.
And what’s the rub?
Death’s feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.

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NameYear
A Child's Christmas in Wales ft. Al Lewis, Ben Robbins, Dylan Thomas 2021
In the White Giant's Thigh 2012
A Child's Christmas in Wales, A Story 2012
Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait 2012
A Winter's Tale 2019
Should Lanterns Shine 2019
And Death Shall Have No Dominion 2019
If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Love 2014
Prologue 2014
If My Head Hurt a Hair's Foot 2012
Author's Prologue 2012
The Hunchback in the Park 2012
Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines 2012
Over Sir John's Hill 2012
Dawn Raid 2012
The Tombstone Told When She Died 2012
In the White Giants Thigh 2014
The Hand That Signed the Paper 2012
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Artist lyrics: Dylan Thomas