Clown in the Moon

Clown in the Moon

My tears are like the quiet drift

Of petals from magic rose;

And all my grief flows from the rift

Of unremembered skies and snow.

I think,that if I touched the earth,

It would crumble;

It is so sad and beautiful,

So tremulously like a dream.

Of any flower

Hourly I sigh,

For all things are leaf-like

And cloud-like.

Flowerly I die,

For all things are grief-like

And shroud-like.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage,rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right.

Because their words had forked no lightening they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men,the last wave by,crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn,too late,they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men,near death,who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be Gay,

Rage,rage against the dying of the light.

And you,my father,there on the sad height,

Curse.bless,me now with your fierce tears,I pray,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage,rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan and Caitlin before New York.

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

Elergy 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.

Grief thief of Time

Grief thief of Time crawls off,

The moon-drawn grave,with the seafaring years,

The knave of pain steals off

The sea-halved faith that blew time to his knees,

The old forget the cries,

Lean time on tide and times the wind stood rough,

Call back the castaways

Riding the sea light on a sunken path,

The old forget the grief,

Hack of the cough,the hanging albatross,

Cast back the bone of youth

And salt-eyed stumble bedward where she lies

Who tossed the high tide in a time of stories

And timelessly lies loving with the thief.

Now Jack my fathers let the time-faced crook,

Death flashing from his sleeve,

With swag of bubbles in a seedy sack

Sneak down the stallion grave,

Bull's eye the outlaw through a eunuch crack

And free the twin-boxed grief,

No silver whistles chase him down the weeks'

Dayed peaks to day to death,

These stolen bubbles have the bites of snakes

And the undead eye-teeth,

No third eye probe into a rainbow's sex

That bridged the human halves,

all shall remain and on the graveward gulf

Shape with my fathers' thieves.

I dreamed my Genesis

I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep,breaking

Through the rotating shell,strong

As motor muscle on the drill,driving

Through vision and the girdered nerve,

From limbs that had the measure of the worm,shuffled

Off from the creasing flesh,filed

Through all the irons in the grass,metal

Of suns in the man-melting night.

Heir to the scalding veins that hold love's drop,costly

A creature in my bones I

Rounded my globe of heritage,journey

In bottom gear through night-geared man.

I dreamed my genesis and died again,shrapnel

Rammed in the marching heart,hole

In the stitched wound and clotted wind,muzzled

Death on the mouth that ate the gas.

Sharp in my second death I marked the hills,harvest

Of hemlock and the blades,rust

My blood upon the tempered dead,forcing

My second struggling from the grass.

And power was contagious in my birth,second

Rise of the skeleton and

Rerobing of the naked ghost.Manhood

Spat up from the resuffered pain.

I dreamed my genesis in sweat of death,fallen

Twice in the feeding sea,grown

Stale of Adam's brine until,vision

Of new man strength,I seek the sun.

Where three rivers meet-Laugharne

I fellowed sleep

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,

Let fall the tear of time;the sleeper's eye,

Shifting to light,turned on me like a moon.

So,planing-heeled,I flew along my man

And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky.

I fled the earth and,naked,climbed the weather,

Reaching a second ground far from the stars;

And there we wept.I and a ghostly other,

My mothers-eyed ,upon the tops of trees;

I fled that ground as lightly as a feather.

'My fathers' globe knocks on its nave and sings'.

'This that we tread was,too,your fathers' land.'

I see you boys of summer in your ruin

I see you boys of summer in your ruin.

Man in his maggot's barren.

And boys are full and foreign in the pouch.

I am the man your father was.

We are the sons of flint and pitch.

O see the poles are kissing as they cross.

Dylan.

Dylan.

Here lie the beasts

Here lie the beasts of man and here I feast,

The dead man said,

And silently I milk the devil's breast.

Here spring the silent venoms of his blood,

Here clings the meat to sever from his side.

Hell's in the dust.

Here lies the beast of man and here his angels,

The dead man said,

And silently I milk the buried flowers.

Here drips a silent honey in my shroud,

Here slips the ghost who made of my pale bed

The heaven's house.

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 finger 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;

Hand have no tears to flow.

Was there a Time

Was there a Time when dancers with their fiddles

In children's circuses could stay their troubles ?

There was a time they could cry over books,

But time has set its maggot on their track.

Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.

What's never known is safest in this life.

Under the skysigns they who have no arms

Have cleanest hands,and ,as the heartless ghost

Alone's unhurt,so the blind man sees best.

As I was young and easy,

As I was young and easy,

In the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dieing,

though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Let it be known

Let it be known that little live but lies,

Love-lies,and god-lies,and lies-to-please,

Let children know,and old men at their gates,

That this is lies that moans departure,

And that is lies that,after the old men die,

Declare their souls,let children know,live after.

Walking in Gardens

Walking in Gardens by the sides

Of marble bathers toeing the garden ponds,

Skirting the ordered beds of paint-box flowers,

We spoke of drink and girls,for hours

Touched on the outskirts of the mind,

Then stirred a little chaos in the sun.

A new divinity,a god of wheels

Destroying souls and laying waste,

Trampling to dust the bits and pieces

Of faulty men and their diseases,

Rose in our outworn brains.We spoke our lines,

Made,for the bathers to admire,

Dramatic gestures in the air.

Ruin and revolution

Whirled in our words,then faded.

We might have tried light matches in the wind.

Over and round the ordered garden hummed,

There was no need of a new divinity,

No tidy flower moved,or lowered her hand

To brush upon the waters of the pond.

Too long,Skeleton

Too long,Skeleton,death's risen

Out of the soil and seed into the drive,

Chalk cooled by leaves in the hot season,

Too long,skeleton,death's all alive

From nape to toe,a sanatorium piece

Sly as an adder,rid of fleas.

Take now content,no longer posturing

As raped and reaped,bones bid for auction,

The prism of the eye now void by suction,

New man best whose blood runs thick,

Rather than charnel-house as symbol

Of the moment and the dead hour.

Written for a personal epitaph

Written for a personal epitaph

Feeding the worm

Who do I blame

Because laid down

At last by time,

Here under the earth with girl and thief,

Who do I blame

Whose loving crime

Moulded my form

Within her womb,

Who gave me life and then the grave,

Mother I blame.

Here is her labour's end,

Dead limb and mind,

All love and sweat

Gone now to rot.

I am man's reply to every question,

His aim and destination.

When you have ground such beauty down to dust.

When you have ground such beauty down to dust.

As flies before the breath

And,at the touch,trembles with lover's fever,

Or sundered it to look the closer,

Magnified and made immense

At one side's loss,

Turn inside out,and see at glance

Wisdom is folly,love is not,

Sense can maim it,wisdom mar it,

Folly purify and make it true.

For folly was

When wisdom lay not in the soul

But in the body of the trees and stones,

Was when sense found a way to them

Growing on hills or shining under water.

Come wise in foolishness,

Go silly and be Christ's good brother,

He whose lovers were both wise and sensible

When folly stirred,warm in the foolish heart

They are only the Dead who did not love

They are only the Dead who did not love,

Lipless and tongueless in the sour earth

Staring at others,poor unlovers.

They are the only living thing who did love,

So are we full with strength,

Ready to rise,easy to sleep.

Who has completeness that can cut

A comic hour to an end through want of woman

And the warmth she gives,

And yet be human,

Feel the same soft blood flow thoroughly,

Have food and drink,unlovingly?

None,and his deadly welcome

At the hour's end

Shall prove unworthy for his doing,

Which was good at word,

But came from out the mouth unknowing

Of such great goodness as is ours.

There is no dead but is not loved

Awhile,alittle,

Out of the fullness of another's heart

Having so much to spare.

That,then,is fortunate,

But,by your habit unreturned,

And by your habit unreturnable.

So is there missed a certain godliness

That's not without it's woe,

And not without divinity,

For it can quicken or it can kill.

Look,there's the dead who did not love,

And there's the living who did love,

Around our little selves

Touching our seperate love with badinage.

Conceive these images in Air

Conceive these images in Air,
Wrap them in flame, they're mine;
set against granite,
Let the two dull stones be grey,
Or,formed of sand,
Trickle away through thought,
In water or in metal,
Flowing and melting under lime.
Cut them in rock,
So,not to be defaced,
They harden and take sharp again
As signs I've not brought down
To any lighter state
By love-tip or my hand's red heat.

Time enough to rot

Time enough to rot;

Toss overhead

Your garden ball of blood;

Breathe against air,

Puffing the light's flame to and fro,

Not drawing in your suction's kiss.

Your mouth's fine dust

Will find such love against the grain,

And break through dark;

It's acrid in the streets;

A paper witch upon her sulphured broom

Flies from the gutter.

The still go hard,

The moving fructify;

The walker's apple's black as sin;

The waters of his mind draw in.

Then swim your head,

For you've a sea to lie.

The Air you breathe

The Air you breathe encroaches

The throat is mine I know the neck

Wind is my enemy your hair shant stir

Under his strong impulsive kiss

The rainbow's foot is not more apt

To have the centaur lover

So steal her not O goat-legged wind

But leave but still adore

For if the gods would love

Theyd see with eyes like mine

But should not touch like I

Your sweet inductive thighs

And raven hair.

I know this vicious minute's hour

I know this vicious minute's hour;

It is a sour motion in the blood,

That,like a tree,has roots in you,

And buds in you,

Each silver moment chimes in steps of sound,

And I,caught in mid-air perhaps,

Hear and am still the little bird,

You have offended,periodic heart;

You I shall drown unreasonably,

Leave you in me to be found

Darker than ever,

Too full with blood to let my love flow in.

Stop is unreal;

I want reality to hold within my palm,

Not ,as a symbol,stone speaking or no,

But it,reality,whose voice I know

To be the circle not the stair of sound.

Go is my wish;

Then shall I go,

But in the light of going

Minutes are mine

I could devote to other things.

Stop has no minutes,

but I go or die

Dylan-the Portrait.

The front page of the autobiography by Ferris that,published over 20 years ago provides great details of the life of Dylan Thomas.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas