Life and Death

The one significant thing about the public dying of both Teri Schiavo and the Pope is the contradictions in the culture of life or death

Nowhere else is it better illustrated than in Dylan Thomas' poems about death, often marked by deep analysis of religion.

"Do not go gentle into that good night"is a passionate call for us to fight death while "And death shall have no dominion" expresses the christian belief of everlasting life

For Dylan Thomas, mortality and decay are an inescapable part of life, with its promise of new life, is tainted by death.

Here's one that "draws on the significance of the bread and wine from the Eucharist, to introduce the concept of eternal life through Christ. Just as the production of bread and wine involves the destruction of a living organism during harvesting, we are only granted redemption after the horror of the execution"

THIS BREAD I BREAK

This bread I break was once the oat
This wine upon a foreign tree
Ploughed in its fruit;
Man in the day or wine at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.
Once in this wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the wine
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun' pulled the wind down.
This flesh I break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein
Were oat and the grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.