If I Were Tickled by the Rub of Love

(...)
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 ever raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, 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 that his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:

Man be my metaphor.

(Dylan Thomas)