Dylan Thomas

[Santino]

Born on this day in 1914.

From 'Altarwise by Owl-Light':

And from the windy West came two-gunned Gabriel,
From Jesu’s sleeve trumped up the king of spots,
The sheath-decked jacks, queen with a shuffled heart;
Said the fake gentleman in suit of spades,
Black-tongued and tipsy from salvation’s bottle.
Rose my Byzantine Adam in the night.
For loss of blood I fell on Ishmael’s plain,
Under the milky mushrooms slew my hunger,
A climbing sea from Asia had me down
And Jonah’s Moby snatched me by the hair,
Cross-stroked salt Adam to the frozen angel
Pin-legged on pole-hills with a black medusa
By waste seas where the white bear quoted Virgil
And sirens singing from our lady’s sea-straw.



Live recording (yesterday) of Under Milk Wood, from New York, with Michael Sheen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04mlkqp

 

[marty21]

I do love that poem about dying - Do not go gentle into that good night...

Lived in Swansea for a few years in the 80s, I lived near the place he was born (Cwmdonkin Terrace) and several times, I chatted to old blokes in pubs who claimed they knew him and that he owed them money

 

[Pickman's model]

I do love that poem about dying - Do not go gentle into that good night...

Lived in Swansea for a few years in the 80s, I lived near the place he was born (Cwmdonkin Terrace) and several times, I chatted to old blokes in pub who claimed they knew him an that he owed them money

 

[butchersapron]

Always liked The hand that signed the paper:


The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The fingers' joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

 

[Cheesypoof]

Love them...espec Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and
cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

 

[davesgcr]

Good to hear the many positive things being said about the poet. A fascinating - and complex character - and what a legacy. ! Very few people left now who really know him - Gwen Watkins - wife of a fellow Swansea poet being one. He has not gone too gently into that good night

Fascinating Poetry Please yesterday about him and links to his German appreciation audience - both in the DDR and Federal Germany.

 

[editor]

This may be of interest:
Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood and the south London connection

 

[davesgcr]

Anything is possible - a direct link on the 68 bus !

 

[JimW]

Truly great, I'd add "Refusal To Mourn..." to the great poems above:

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

 

[davesgcr]

http://www.southwales-eveningpost.c...352/Article/images/23627176/7406654-large.jpg

He would indeed be proud .......

 

[weltweit]

I don't know his poems yet but I do love Under Milk Wood.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

My mum used to read "A Child's Christmas in Wales" to us when we were kids.....loved it then and love it now.

Short excerpt...

" For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar. "

 

[pennimania]

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

I've just done a sculpture about this

 

[goldenecitrone]

Enjoyed listening to this the other day. Interviews with people who knew Dylan made by Cerys Matthews' uncle. The local publican claims he never saw Dylan pissed. Dylan's daughter, on the other hand, says he never bothered to eat in the evenings sometimes as he was so sloshed. Dylan's mum is on there, too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04m9z8t

 

[susie12]

pennimania do have a picture? If you feel like sharing of course.

 

[kittyP]

Enjoyed listening to this the other day. Interviews with people who knew Dylan made by Cerys Matthews' uncle. The local publican claims he never saw Dylan pissed. Dylan's daughter, on the other hand, says he never bothered to eat in the evenings sometimes as he was so sloshed. Dylan's mum is on there, too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04m9z8t

We were listening to it driving back from the boys dads in Sussex on Sunday. Was lovely

 

[pennimania]

You asked for it - here's a detail. The Green Fuse...

It's on my blog caterpillarsandwiches.wordpress.com.

 

[editor]

Update: Half Moon Pub nominated for Southwark Blue Plaque – but your vote is needed