Today, the late great Dylan Thomas would have turned 99. I have always been a great admirer of his life and his unfailing commitment to his craft, that continue to inspire. Today I thought I'd celebrate his birth, with one of his fine poems. Raise a glass and enjoy. We will be hearing a lot more about him next year, what with it being the centenary of this legends birth.
Poem in October
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbours wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
the morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
in rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here we found climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where i wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea the wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed agan a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and the sea
Where a boy
In the listerning
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
in the sun
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there in the summer moon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my hear's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
1945
