00:00:36.960 - 00:00:52.300

Morton Marcus: He said: In my craft or sullen heart, exercised in the still night, when only the moon rages, and the lovers lie abed with all their griefs in their arms, I labor by singing light, not for

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ambition or bread, or the strut and trade of charms on the ivory stages but for the common wages of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart from the raging moon I write on these spindrift pages, nor for the towering dead with their

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nightingales and psalms, but for the lovers, their arms around the griefs of the ages, who pay no praise or wages, nor heed my craft or sullen art. Dylan Thomas: If I were tickled by the rub of love, a rooking

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girl who stole me for her side, broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string. If the red tickle as the kettle calve still set to scratch a laughter from my lung, I would not fear the apple nor the flood [nor the bad blood of spring].

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Morton Marcus: And that opening poem and the voice that you heard there reading another poem is the subject of tonight's show, Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet, the great English poet because he did write in English. It is his birthday

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today. He was born on October 27th, 1914. He is in my estimation one of the towering geniuses of English poetry of the century. His poetry is complex, it is full of metaphor and image. The images are usually pastoral, that is

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they're rural, they're of the country. They partake of a lot of Christian imagery, very standard Christian imagery, talking about Christ, talking about the Kingfisher being Christ, talking about the Trinity, images and symbolism

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that you'll very, very quickly get on. He expresses his own concerns with birth and death and rebirth and the cycle of the seasons. And tonight, we're going to not only have me read some of his poems, but we are actually going to hear him read

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his own poems, including that poem that we just started. I wanted you to get a sense of his voice and to see what a great reader he was. As I said, he was born in 1914. He was born in Swansea, Wales, and most of his life was spent in Wales. Almost

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all the imagery of his writing, both his wonderful short stories as well as his poems, are set in and around Swansea. He has immortalized, he has mythologized this little English seaside village in his poetry, and has made the very, very

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common, and many people feel very dull life of the village into something gloriously wonderful. And I certainly would suggest that you go out and find Thomas' poetry and find his prose as well. He was, as I said, obsessed with birth and

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death and especially death, and we are going to read some of his poems now. It is his language that really sort of absolutely mesmerizes people, and it is these great celebratory bard-like intonings of the wonders of the world, and the

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sufferings that men and women go through. Also, he is very, very comic, especially not in his poetry so much as in his prose as he talks about the people of Swansea. And let's go into one of the first poems that he wrote, which garnered such

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interest in England. When his poems came out in the United States in the Collected Poems and even before that, people did not know what to think of them because they are so complex. But the great change was when Dylan Thomas came over to the United

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States and read his poems, because not only did he give them the right intonation for the syntax, which sometimes gets gnarled, but his voice was so wonderfully powerful that- he really brought his poems alive. And for a long, long time -- and

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I'm talking around thirty years, probably from 1951 to 1981 -- Dylan Thomas was considered in this poet- in this country one of the great poets, as happens with fashion, in writing, as everything else. His reputation has not fallen off, people have

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just not been reading him, but of course he is in all the anthologies. So this is the first poem then. And again, having heard him read I sort of read in a quasi-imitation of him, but certainly know how to accent these poems of his since

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I've heard him read so much. Almost all of his poems are on Caedmon Records, and then those will be the records we'll be playing from the ones we've been able to garner here at the station. So the first one was called:

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THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER, and is all about the power of nature and the power of spring and the power of life itself. And here is this poem that first garnered attention when Thomas was barely twenty years old.

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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.

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The force that drives the water through the rocks drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins , how at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

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The hand that whirls the water in the pool stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging man how of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

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The lips of time leech to the fountain head; love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood shall calm her sores. And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind , how time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

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And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb how at my sheet goes the same crooked worm. And I think you can tell in all of that imagery the absolute obsession with death, that he cannot explain it, he is dumb to

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tell how his youth will be bent by a wintery fever. How the mountains spring that he will suck the water from actually will be part of what kills him. He cannot tell the hangman how of his clay is made the hangman's lime, or how time has

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ticked a heaven around the stars, or how at my sheet goes the same crooked worm and of course, the sheet here is the shroud. So, his concerns early on are very, very much with this sense of death that is coming, with a sense of decay that is

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all around him, though at the same time there is of course the sense of life. Here is another poem from the same years. And again, just listen to the beauty of this language and just pick up the images even though the meaning may in some way really

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demand much more of your attention on the page than you can get at just the hearing. But here is: LIGHT BREAKS WHEN NO SUN SHINES Light breaks where no sun shines; where no sea runs, the

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waters of the heart push in their tides; and, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads, the things of light file through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones. A candle in the thighs warms youth and seed and burns the

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seeds of age; where no seed stirs, the fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars, bright as a fig; where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs. Dawn breaks behind the eyes; from poles of skull and toe the

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windy blood slides like a sea; nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky spout to the rod divining in a smile the oil of tears. Night in the sockets rounds, like some pitch moon, the limit

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of the globes; day lights the bone; where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin the winter's robes; the film of spring is hanging from the lids. Light breaks on secret lots, on tips of thought where thoughts

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smell in the rain; when logics dies, the secret of the soil grows through the eye, and blood jumps in the sun; above the waste allotments the dawn halts. And besides the imagery and the metaphors, the amazing

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metaphors, there is constant punning going on. So the gushes of the sky spout to the rod, divining in a smile, the oil of tears. The play here is on the divining rod, which of course can find water under the soil. So you have this continuous

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punning going on. And I'm looking for another poem now. You have the continuous punning going on, and what I wanted to do was find another poem from this period, which I'll have to do in the other book. And we will do that forthright and then

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we're going to go into, believe it or not, a complex poem by Dylan Thomas. And right now I'm going to read this poem that I said I was looking for and have now found. And again, this is from the mid 30s, and it's called:

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AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION, and this is his proclamation and notice how much he is like a bard, almost like a prophet or priest, in which he declares that death will not win, that life will win out over death.

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And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon; when their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, they shall have stars at elbow and foot; though they go mad

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they shall be sane, though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; though lovers be lost love shall not; and death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of

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the sea they lying long shall not die windily; twisting on racks when sinews give way, strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; faith in their hands shall snap in two, and the unicorn evils run them through; split all ends up they

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shan't crack; and death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears or waves break loud on the seashores; where blew a flower may a flower no more lift its head to the blows

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of the rain; though they be mad and dead as nails, heads of the characters hammer through daisies; break in the sun till the sun breaks down, and death shall have no dominion. And now I want to go into a poem which we actually started to

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hear before. And I want to give you sort of an introduction to it at first. It's called, "If I Were Tickled By The Rub Of Love." And in this one Thomas -- who of course partakes- or not of course, but I should tell you partakes a lot in Freudian

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thought, which was very popular in the 30s and 40s -- in this very, very early poem imagines himself the infant about to be born, and in this case is talking to the woman who could be his mother but also seems to sound like the lover. And he

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talks about the idea of pre-birth and then birth. And, "If I Were Tickled By The Rub Of Love," takes off from Hamlet's famous soliloquy, which goes, "To be or not to be, that is the question." And down through around half of that soliloquy,

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he says: "To die, to sleep -- to sleep, perchance to dream -- ay, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us

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pause." And this idea is where the title comes from, "If I Were Tickled By The Rub Of Love," but he's also imagining himself a fetus, and if his mother and father are having sexuality as a fetus, he

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may be, "tickled by the rub of love," and I'll let you imagine what that is. Later on he says: "...the dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will and

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makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?" So we endure this life. That, also from Hamlet, and this is Dylan Thomas now doing this poem, this meditation on being

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the unborn child in this poem called: IF I WERE TICKLED BY THE RUB OF LOVE, so listen carefully, a very complex poem, but I hope you just enjoy the sounds of the language and the play of words and puns and metaphors in this

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poem. Dylan Thomas: If I were tickled by the rub of love, a rooking girl who stole me for her side, broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string, if the red tickle as the cattle

00:16:50.450 - 00:17:13.340

calve still set to scratch a laughter from my lung, I would not fear the apple nor the flood nor the bad blood of spring. Shall it be male or female? say the cells, and drop the plum like fire from the flesh. If I were tickled by the hatching

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hair, the winging bone that sprouted in the heels, the itch of man upon the baby’s thigh, I would not fear the gallows nor the axe, nor the crossed sticks of war. Shall it be male or female? say the fingers that chalk the

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And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve? Your walls with green girls and their men. I would not fear the muscling-in of love if I were tickled by the urchin hungers rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve. I would not fear the

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devil in the loin nor the outspoken grave. If I were tickled by the lovers' rub that wipes away not mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss? My Jack of Christ crow's-foot nor the lock of sick old manhood on the fallen

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jaws, time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib would leave me cold as butter for the flies, the sea of scums could drown me as it broke dead on the sweethearts' toes. This world is half the devil's and my own, daft with the drug

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born thorny on the tree? The words of death are dryer than that's smoking in a girl and curling round the bud that forks her eye. An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone, and all the herrings smelling in the sea, I sit and watch the worm

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beneath my nail wearing the quick away. his stiff, my wordy wounds are printed with your hair. I would be tickled by the rub that is: man be my metaphor. Morton Marcus: And that was Dylan Thomas whose birthday is

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today. He was born on this date in 1914. Thomas would go back into this idea of being inside the womb again and again. And he's got another poem from about this time, which is called, "If My Head Hurt a Hair's Foot." And notice he just loves the sound,

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he loves alliteration, and he just loves the sound of language. Some of these may sound very free to you. They're actually tremendously complexly constructed, they're rhymed, they're in meters, a lot of them are in Welsh forms that he

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brings into English, which would seem impossible because Welsh is so musical but he was able to do it and make it seem very, very simple. So here is Dylan Thomas, who was born, again, this day October 27th, 1914, with another of these poems about being the

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fetus, being the unborn infant. IF MY HEAD HURT A HAIR'S FOOT, and again he does not want to hurt his mother. He doesn't want to create any pain. And remember you're born headfirst etc, etc.

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If my head hurt a hair's foot pack back the downed bone. If the unpricked ball of my breath bump on a spout let the bubbles jump out. Sooner drop with the worm of the ropes round my throat than bully ill love in the clouted scene.

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All game phrases fit your ring of a cockfight: I'll comb the snared woods with a glove on a lamp, peck, sprint, dance on fountains and duck time before I rush in a crouch the ghost with a hammer, air,

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Strike light, and bloody a loud room. If my bunched, monkey coming is cruel rage me back to the making house. My hand unravel when you sew the deep door. The bed is a cross place. Bend, if my journey ache, direction like

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an arc or make a limp and riderless shape to leap nine thinning months. No. Not for Christ's dazzling bed or a nacreous sleep among soft particles and charms

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My dear would I change my tears or your iron head. Thrust, my daughter or son, to escape, there is none, none, none, nor when all ponderous heaven's host of waters breaks. Now to awake husked of gestures and my joy like a cave to the

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anguish and carrion, to the infant forever unfree, oh, my lost love bounced from a good home; the grain that hurries this way from the rim of the grave has a voice and a house, and there and here you must couch and cry.

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Rest beyond choice in the dust-appointed grain, at the breast stored with seas. No return through the waves of the fat streets nor the skeleton's thin ways. The grave and my calm body are shut to your coming as stone, and the

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endless beginning of prodigies suffers open. And I hope a lot of this imagery, especially the images of ropes, and any kind of string, lets you metaphorically know that he is talking about the umbilical cord. And that

00:24:19.070 - 00:24:43.850

again is a series of poems as a fetus talks about not wanting to cause pain to the mother. I would like to read now several different kinds of poems by him. And what I should tell you about this is that Dylan Thomas then goes to London to seek his

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fortune and gets sort of a [unintelligible] there during the war and he becomes an air raid warden and he sees some pretty horrible situation. And he has written several poems about the situation of being an air raid warden. And what I

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would like to do is to read you three of these poems. I'm reading the last one, one of his great poems at the end. So first, I will read -- and by the way, the war I'm talking about for you people is of course World War II, which comes to

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England in 1939. And there is bombings of London all the time and Thomas saw some horrible things. So here is several of these Dylan Thomas poems. And the first one is called: AMONG THOSE KILLED IN THE DAWN RAID WAS A MAN AGED A HUNDRED

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When the morning was waking over the war he put on his clothes and stepped out and he died, the locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide, he dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone and the funeral grains of the

00:26:14.330 - 00:26:34.160

slaughtered floor. Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun and the craters of his eyes grew springshots and fire when all the keys shot from the locks, and rang. Dig no more for the chains of his grey-haired heart. The heavenly

00:26:34.160 - 00:26:54.770

ambulance drawn by a wound Assembling waits for the spade's ring on the cage. Oh, keep his bones away from the common cart, the morning is flying on the wings of his age and a hundred storks perch on the sun's right

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hand. And another one which is called, "Ceremony After A Fire Raid," which is after an air raid, is a very, very complex form which when you see it on the page, you see how he has actually invented

00:27:18.230 - 00:27:43.430

a stanzaic form with a tremendously complex rhymes screen- rhyme scenes- rhyme scheme. And I will read that to you now, and you will probably hear how this poem is constructed, I hope. And it is in three parts, and I will just

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take a long pause after each part. CEREMONY AFTER A FIRE RAID Myselves the grievers grieve among the street burned to tireless death , a child of a few hours with its kneading

00:28:01.220 - 00:28:23.600

mouth charred on the black breast of the grave the mother dug, and its arms full of fires. Begin with singing, sing darkness kindled back into beginning when the caught tongue nodded blind, a star was broken into the centuries of

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the child myselves grieve now, and miracles cannot atone. Forgive us, forgive us, your death that myselves the believers may hold it in a great flood till the blood shall spurt, and the dust shall sing like a bird as the grains

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blow, as your death grows, through our heart. Crying your dying cry, child beyond cockcrow, by the fire-dwarfed street we chant the flying sea in the body bereft. Love is the last light spoken. Oh seed of sons in the loin of the black

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husk left. I know not whether Adam or Eve, the adorned holy bullock or the white ewe lamb or the chosen virgin laid in her snow on the altar of London, whether that was the first to die in the

00:29:33.800 - 00:29:53.660

cinder of the little skull, o bride and bride groom, o Adam and Eve together lying in the lull under the sad breast of the head stone white as the skeleton of the garden of Eden. I know the legend of Adam and Eve is never for a second silent in my

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service over the dead infants, over the one child who was priest and servants, word, singers, and tongue in the cinder of the little skull, who was the serpent's night fall and the fruit like a sun, man and woman undone, beginning crumbled

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back to darkness bare as nurseries of the garden of wilderness. Into the organpipes and steeples of the luminous cathedrals, into the weathercocks' molten mouths rippling in twelve-winded

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circles, into the dead clock burning the hour over the urn of sabbaths, over the whirling ditch of daybreak, over the sun's hovel and the slum of fire and the golden pavements laid in requiems, into the bread in a wheatfield of flames, into the

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wine burning like brandy, the masses of the sea, the masses of the sea under, the masses of the infant [cut-off] [-bearing sea erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever glory glory glory, the sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder]

00:31:00.650 - 00:31:19.970

I'm going to read a series of poems that really interested Thomas very much. As he was concerned with birth and death, he was also very much concerned with the cycle of his own birthdays. And he began to write birthday poems very early, and

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they are some of his greatest poems. And what I would like to do, for the next ten minutes or so, is to read those poems, and then read some Halloween poems since Halloween will be coming up before we meet again in the Poetry Show. So here is Dylan

00:31:35.420 - 00:32:05.210

Thomas on his 24th birthday, and looking at the world again from the same imagery of birth, of being born, of the shroud which is death, of coming into this world from his mother's birth canal and giving a sense of both past and future as he is

00:32:05.210 - 00:32:20.030

twenty-four years old, so: TWENTY-FOUR YEARS Twenty-four years remind the tears of my eyes. Bury the dead for fear that they walk to the grave in labour. In the groin of

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the natural doorway I crouched like a tailor sewing a shroud for a journey by the light of the meat-eating sun. Dressed to die, the sensual strut begun, with my red veins full of money, in the final direction of the elementary town I advance for as

00:32:44.990 - 00:33:21.560

long as forever is. Now Thomas, obviously his birthday was in October and here is one of the famous poems of his- I think- no, it is 127. I've got things in different numbers here, folks. So one of

00:33:21.560 - 00:33:45.800

the books is- yes, okay, good. Here is a poem that he wrote when he was thirty years old and it is one of his great poems. And it is the poem in October, and just move with this wonderful imagery of coming out of the town, going up to a hill

00:33:45.800 - 00:34:06.050

looking down at the town actually, as he walks through the landscape outside Swansea and looks back at this harbor town, and the whole world has become magical in this poem, in October as he enters his 30th year. And yet, with this magic

00:34:06.050 - 00:34:25.910

there is a threat, there is a formidableness of the coming of age and death. So here is Dylan- one of Dylan Thomas' most famous poems, "The Poem in October," and just go with the imagery, the beautiful, wonderful imagery that celebrates life and the

00:34:25.910 - 00:34:40.130

life of the country really also. POEM IN OCTOBER It was my thirtieth year to heaven, woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood and the mussel pooled and the

00:34:40.160 - 00:34:59.510

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.

00:35:02.030 - 00:35:18.620

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

00:35:18.620 - 00:35:32.360

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

00:35:32.360 - 00:35:48.920

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.

00:35:50.630 - 00:36:08.540

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

00:36:09.200 - 00:36:28.550

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

00:36:28.550 - 00:36:41.720

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

00:36:41.840 - 00:37:02.150

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

00:37:02.150 - 00:37:22.670

and the fish in the tide. And the mystery sang alive still in the water and singing birds. And there could I marvel my birthday away but the weather turned around. And the true joy of the long dead child sang

00:37:22.670 - 00:37:43.790

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. Oh, may my heart's truth still be sung on this high hill in a year's turning.

00:37:48.020 - 00:38:13.430

And that was Dylan Thomas', "Poem to October," and now I'm looking for, "Fern Hill," and not finding here. So I have to go back to the back of the book and see if we can find it there. Thomas just loved to write these birthday poems, and he probably

00:38:13.760 - 00:38:41.120

wrote the greatest birthday series of birthday poems that have ever been written by any poet in English. And needless to say, I'm not finding these poems where I should be finding them. That's interesting. Let me take another look again. So, I am

00:38:41.120 - 00:39:09.110

looking for a poem called, "Fern Hill," and it is listed as poem number twenty-two. But when I open to poem number twenty-two I do not find it. Okay, so we will look again. And if you have something to do out there, certainly don't let me keep you

00:39:09.110 - 00:39:29.720

from doing whatever you're doing. I'm not looking this up in another book because when you don't find the poems that you are looking for, then you are in a bit of a fix. And I must say that I cannot understand why that poem is not where it should

00:39:29.720 - 00:39:55.040

be, but I have found it in another book. So, here is a later Dylan Thomas poem called: FERN HILL, as he again remembers his youth. And again it is a beautiful, long poem, very, very evocative, and here it is:

00:40:03.920 - 00:40:21.440

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

00:40:21.440 - 00:40:37.790

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

00:40:37.790 - 00:40:57.380

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

00:40:57.410 - 00:41:15.710

barked clear and loud, 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

00:41:15.710 - 00:41:38.360

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

00:41:38.360 - 00:41:59.450

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

00:41:59.450 - 00:42:15.230

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.

00:42:16.910 - 00:42:40.220

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

00:42:40.250 - 00:42:55.970

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

00:42:55.970 - 00:43:18.020

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

00:43:18.050 - 00:43:50.420

easy in the mercy of his means, time held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea. And as the final Dylan Thomas poem- well, actually, I will read two more. And I will see if I've got the right number for

00:43:50.420 - 00:44:11.150

this one. I hope you could understand -- because I think that last poem is rather simple myself -- I hope you could understand the- the wonder of the world as he remembers what things look like as a young man. And now towards the end of his

00:44:11.150 - 00:44:33.770

life he begins to look back. And he takes on this persona of a man remembering all of his early life in a poem that just repeats itself in rhyme and word from one stage to the next, but everywhere, everything changes. So we're looking at 1, 2, 3, 4,

00:44:33.770 - 00:44:48.950

5 stages of man's life, very much like Shakespeare's seven ages of man. These are the five ages of man, as seen by Dylan Thomas, as he recounts the wonder of his youth, and then middle age and then becoming old, but this is not Thomas

00:44:48.950 - 00:45:08.600

himself, because Thomas actually died in 1953 at the age of thirty-nine. He died very young, but here he takes on the persona of a man and all the man's ages. After the war, he returned to Swansea and then, of course, came over the United States in

00:45:08.600 - 00:45:27.230

the early 50s. But while he was in London, he wrote a lot of radio plays and acted in them, and so his voice was- was known on radio. But anyway, now we're going towards the last poems that he wrote, and this is one of my favorites, and it is

00:45:27.230 - 00:45:47.030

called: THE LAMENT: THE FALL OF THE FIVE AGES OF MAN When I was a windy boy and a bit and the black spit of the chapel fold, (sighed the old ram rod, dying of women), I tiptoed shy

00:45:47.030 - 00:46:06.710

in the gooseberry wood, the rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit, I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled nine-pin down on donkey's common, and on seesaw sunday nights I wooed whoever I would with my wicked eyes, the whole of the moon I could love

00:46:06.710 - 00:46:29.060

and leave all the green leaved little weddings' wives in the coal black bush and let them grieve. When I was a gusty man and a half and the black beast of the beetles' pews (sighed the old ram rod, dying of bitches), not

00:46:29.060 - 00:46:48.290

a boy and a bit in the wick-dipping moon and drunk as a new dropped calf, I whistled all night in the twisted flues, midwives grew in the midnight ditches, and the sizzling sheets of the town cried, Quick! Whenever I dove in a breast high

00:46:48.290 - 00:47:13.790

shoal, wherever I ramped in the clover quilts, whatsoever I did in the coal-black night, I left my quivering prints. When I was a man you could call a man and the black cross of the holy house, (sighed the old ram rod, dying of welcome), brandy

00:47:13.790 - 00:47:35.450

and ripe in my bright, bass prime, no springtailed tom in the red hot town with every simmering woman his mouse but a hillocky bull in the swelter of summer come in his great good time to the sultry, biding herds, I said, oh, time enough

00:47:35.660 - 00:48:00.890

when the blood runs cold, and I lie down but to sleep in bed, for my sulking, skulking, coal-black soul! When I was half the man I was and serve me right as the preachers warn, (sighed the old ram rod, dying of downfall), no

00:48:00.890 - 00:48:24.500

flailing calf or cat in a flame or hickory bull in milky grass but a black sheep with a crumpled horn, at last the soul from its foul mousehole slunk pouting out when the limp time came; and I gave my soul a blind, slashed eye, gristle and

00:48:24.500 - 00:48:51.170

rind, and a roarers' life, and I shoved it into the coal-black sky to find a woman's soul for a wife. Now I am a man no more no more, and a black reward for a roaring life, (sighed the old ram rod, dying of strangers), tidy and

00:48:51.170 - 00:49:20.600

cursed in my dove-cooed room I lie down thin and hear the good bells jaw for, oh, my soul found a sunday wife in the coal-black sky and she bore angels! Harpies around me out of her womb! Chastity prays for me, piety sings, innocence sweetens my

00:49:20.600 - 00:49:55.490

last black breath, modesty hides my thighs in her wings, and all the deadly virtues plague my death! And that was Dylan Thomas whose birthday was today, October the 27th, 1914. He died on November 9th, 1953, in New York City at

00:49:55.490 - 00:50:21.050

the age of thirty-nine. And I should like to end this show by a reading, a poem that I wrote several years ago, which is called, "The Poet's Halloween," because it is All Saints Day when all souls come once more to show us their ghosts, if you

00:50:21.050 - 00:50:34.920

will. I thought there has to be a poet's Halloween as well. So here is a poem for Halloween for all of you out there. And it is called, simply: THE POET'S HALLOWEEN

00:50:36.820 - 00:50:54.490

There must be a poet's Halloween. At night, the old poets, now frayed gray filaments, sway up from their native earth and return. I don't know the date. The calendar reveals nothing but birthdays, death days, saint's days. The

00:50:54.490 - 00:51:13.330

poets blessed us and blessed us but alive. Surely they won't forget us now, nor we them, at this turning point of all our years. Surely the poets won't abandon us to the bomb, but to those poison pills that feed on our illnesses. Some nights I sit

00:51:13.330 - 00:51:28.960

before the bookshelves and hear the words inside the books muttering and cursing under their breath like restless prisoners in their cells. Is that the poet's Halloween? Do the books wait and wait for us to listen, like a choir ready to

00:51:28.960 - 00:51:46.060

open their mouths and return the poets from the dead? Should we go to them or to the window and look out on a landscape where the trees shake their hair and hiss, the fog flounders in, and the moon searches and searches, its astonished face playing hide

00:51:46.060 - 00:52:05.440

and seek with four-foot Draculas carrying plastic shopping bags. Look, the poets, there they are, hardly a presence. No more than slurs in the air, moonlit syllables flickering up the road, sliding among the sauntering brooms and teenage

00:52:05.440 - 00:52:22.720

witches, crepe paper cats and prancing rock musicians. They are only as eternal as the words they wrote, those poets, a decade or a hundred years ago, for the poets have become their words and nothing more, and live only in our repeating what they

00:52:22.720 - 00:52:43.060

said. Their words are invocations that summon their presence and are also spells that keep us beautiful and forever young. This is Mort Marcus, I will be with you three weeks from today.

00:52:43.780 - 00:52:57.460

And I just want to say that this program is supported in part by our community of contributing listeners and we thank them for their support, and for their support especially for Octopush. Please stay tuned for "From the Bookshelves," usually hosted by

00:52:57.460 - 00:53:11.770

Billie Harris, who tonight will bring yours truly, Mort Marcus, reading, "In a Grove," by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and I will tell you more about that story and how it fits in with the Pacific Rim Film Festival which will be taking place this coming

00:53:11.770 - 00:53:15.430

weekend. Be sure to listen, it's up next on KUSP.