This Bread I Break

This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged its fruit;
Man in the day or wind or night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

--Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), Welsh poet

Photo: the chapel altar at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville