Wednesday, July 11, 2007

"Under Milk Wood", Dylan Thomas

I haven't read Dylan Thomas in a long time - probably the last time was high school english poetry.

Under Milk Wood is a radio play. There are so many beautiful bits I want to quote it all. Instead, here's a paragraph from the opening scene, describing the night:

"Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewoman and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jolly, rodgered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sky, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing."

Sure, it's of another time, but I can fully imagine a little Welsh town, asleep at night, while at the same time get an idea of all the people who live there. I love how he transposes adjectives - e.g. "wetnosed" used to describe the damp night yards the dogs are in instead of the dog itself.

This book is a Dylan Thomas omnibus, so hope to dip into some of his poems along the way.