DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

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

It was at a Poetry Symposium that I came upon this poem, the presenters were coincidentally 3 PRC students, who made a real gallant effort in bringing out the essence of the poem. Death was the main theme. Of course, not death as death itself, but a reaction to death. Dylan Thomas wrote the poem urging his ill-stricken father not to give up the fight for life, but instead to stay the course and to persevere in his good fight for life, against death’s conquest. Thomas goes to the extent of expressing his disdain and his seething anger at the “dying of the light”, which he saw as life’s ultimate betrayal.

In all truth, when I first heard of this poem, I thought little of it. I thought of the poem as an emotional psychological reaction to one’s encounter with death and that the poet was failing to recognize that it was time for his father to leave this life. I guess my association with the poem was abruptly put to an end at that very juncture, and I committed it to the deep recesses of my memory banks, until yesterday…

Now I know, Thomas knew the realities he faced. Like a child, whose only weapon is her rage, he channels his anger at this indomitable facet of life. For one, entrapped in a childlike malaise, we can only hope that reality overturns itself, even against all the odds. Will it? Can it? We stubbornly ascertain it has to. It must!