FOR DYLAN THOMAS IN THE DARK BLUE DUSK, IN THE GILDED DUST OF WORDS (FINAL VERSION REVISED EXTENSIVELY)

 

FOR DYLAN THOMAS IN THE DARK BLUE DUSK, IN THE GILDED DUST OF WORDS

for the poet Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953)

 

as you were singing that the givers of Light

would have no end that the green rills

growing greener would furl in waves

about us ever near from our Eden's remembered

blossoming and the Christ tonged bells

and that the sun dipped in the clouds down low

would ever arise because in poetry its blazing

more than survives a thing you thought not even

necessary to say

somewhere farther beyond your white roads' chrism

we forgot that poetry is not prose 

and no longer gathered the rose upon rose

the once upons. even the dooms of men so praised

so that the prismed web broke

apart weeping and with it the human heart

my heart and where

and what and how in Art will the angels come

to trouble the springs again my friend

so that healing descends and with it

the rustling drifting page illuminated

dappled with apple boughs with the sprouting

of gold and undimmed

when your voice is stilled

when the news is all we know

I cannot comprehend

only that vaguely

blue and darker blue with the dusk

as your disguise the village from afar

you'll view in dreamy profusion muted

and weep for Wales and all you knew

for all that meant to you.

and we go casting about in sighs

Mere ghosts of ourselves

forgetting what you knew.

that bright words, should not be spare

but myriad, like the stars.

mary angela douglas 24 november 2016; 22 october 2021;14 june 2024