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/lit/ - Literature

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2401353 No.2401353 [Reply] [Original]

Where are my Dylan Thomas fans tonight?

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

'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.'

"Sow my salt seed"... come on. That shit's fantastic.

>> No.2401366

Best modern poet

>> No.2401368

There's a recording of this available where Dylan Thomas is reading it.

It's magnificent.

>> No.2401403
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2401403

The best word I can use to describe his verse is 'overwhelming'.

"AND I MUST ENTER AGAIN THE ROUND ZION OF THE WATER BEAD..."

>> No.2401405

I read his poems at my dead brother's grave.

>> No.2401425

Great collections of lines that add up to little.

Granted, "Fern Hills" is great.

>> No.2401435

>>2401425
"Though time held me green and dying, I sang in my chains like the sea."

oof. Killer.

>> No.2402685

>>2401353
Probably my second favourite poet, after Yeats. I find him damn hard to understand but that's all part of the fun. Even to begin to understand, I need to read his poems over and over again. Often though, the pure sound of his poems is enough to enjoy them - even without understanding.

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound
And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing
The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.