I read a little Dylan Thomas last night. First time for a long time. “Under Milk Wood” is a true classic, but much of his other verse writing, I find a welter of words that quickly become too rich and dark for my stomach. But it is jazz. A complex, distressing barrage of improvisation that stuns the prissy levels of consciousness and lets the bardic, raw unconscious voice reel in delighted freedom of sound and association. A windful sky of darkness racing with occassional glimpse of translucent still starlight. So here I am, witless and broken backed…..
DYLAN
1
Son of the wave
A fluid tide jazz
Murmuration of starling words
Swinging drunk
Self-eloquent
Singing down evening lanes
The world exultant
The world squeezed
Tumbling in woven line
Dancing on tender, long toes
Sparkling.
2
My father’s mother, too, was a Thomas,
Small as a mouse with a shout and a bite
Who faded fast, turned white, drowned in herself,
Lost and homesick for something lost.
And I, maybe, now abraded down to
A Welsh road of rolling river words
Tied golden, chained to tongue
A dance for ears, mighty, joyous,
Cloud-wrenching, heart-bursting soliloquy.
3
A deliquescent, delightful urination
Of golden words.
A mushroom-minded mouthful
Of minced meanings.
A rhythmic tumble, a murder of crows,
A wild macaw of seagulled callings,
A taste of death, sweet and dusty.
So falling a sound, so rising,
A breathless gander, a meander,
A vast river of undone spun
Spick and span trodden sound.
A rush, a relief, a rocket acceleration
Of howling words
Through one bright mind.
4
O Dylan, a dilation
A look you here
A gone-to-bed-at-noon,
A fluster of seed heads
Blown in breezes,
The drunken, dizzy delight
And a slow, slow, solidifying
Concretion of the weight
And want of seconds,
Rapid, rapid, the going and the coming
Of sparrows, the flutter of days
Between spark and darkness
Of death worm dark.
simonhlilly 