Roger,
I have a pact with myself to never use the word "soul". I just broke it because I didn't find "mind" an adequate substitute.
I have always taken the larger meaning from the poem and never thought that the intense personal pain of Thomas was more than a starting point for a howl of resentment against the dirty trick of mortality. Perhaps only those who grew up outside orgamised religion can remember the sense of outrage when they fully absorbed the inescapability of the indignity of death. The waste of accumulated knowledge. The blankness of it. For me, that is what the poem is about.
Those who have been trained into another posture will not share that response.
Janet
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