Today is Dylan Thomas's birthday

The view from Laugharne Castle across the Estuary -  a view that Dylan Marlais Thomas knew every ripple, sandbbar, pool and shadow of.  He was born today, 27th October, 1914, at No. 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in Swansea, and died, aged just 39, on the 9th November 1953, in New York. 2014 will be the centenary of his birth so I imagine there will be special celebrations in our part of Wales.  His biography is well-covered on Wikipedia . . . LINK

Poem in October

By Dylan Thomas
 

It was my thirtieth year to heaven

Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour 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 were fond 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 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 again 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 sea

                  Where a boy

            In the listening

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 then in the summer noon   

Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.   

            O may my heart’s truth

                  Still be sung

      On this high hill in a year’s turning.

Such a beautiful poem.  Sometimes he wrote so lyrically and the magic of his words is beyond compare, but other of his poems seem unfathomable to me.  We never studied him at school, nor was his work included in the A-level equivalent I did, or I might have understood him more.  So today I shall just have to think of his brief life and wonder to what heights he might have risen had he joined the Temperance Society . . . . 

The village of Laugharne, where Dylan and Caitlan Thomas lived for some years and where the poet was buried.

 HERE  the great Richard Burton reads the first voice in Under Milk Wood.  It gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.


“A tiny dingle is Milk Wood
By Golden Grove ‘neath Grongar,
But let me choose and oh! I should
Love all my life and longer

To stroll among our trees and stray
In Goosegog Lane, on Donkey Down,
And hear the Dewi sing all day,
And never, never leave the town.”

You learn something new every day.  Until I was listening to Richard Burton's rendition of Under Milk Wood just now,  I never knew I lived so close to Milk Wood - or indeed, that it was a real place.  Golden Grove 'neath Grongar (hill) is in the Towy Valley close by us here.  Well well.  Now I must seek out Milk Wood . . .

The little tidal stream at the edge of the car park at Laugharne.