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 favorite 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