50

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“You look like a million bucks
In a wicker basket
All green and wrinkled.”

I knew a man once
A writer of his own ilk
An unknown ilk
Who stopped talking to me long ago
Wishing to be 50.

“I can’t possibly be what I’ve been and be 50.
It would be as though donkey’s years were awash
In warm waters of past motherhood. Lost.

“Because 50 gives me running time to finish the race
What I need to say and do.
What needs to be said, and done
Marched and run.”

“How much of your life would you give away?”
I asked him, “if you could not and never remember it?”

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas