Dylan Thomas -- Under Milk Wood

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.
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To begin at the beginning:
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.
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 cocklewomen 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 jollyrodgered 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 sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing. Only your eyes are unclosed, to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep. And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.
Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dew fall, star fall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.
Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning, in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's loft like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is tonight in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.
Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed; tumbling by the Sailors Arms.
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the combs and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.
From where you are, you can hear their dreams.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• dylan
• thomas
• under
• milkwood
• milk
• wood
• poetry
• Richard
• Burton

[PoetJC]

Sensational poem read just beautifully - I'm gonna share it on JPiC Forum! Thanks for this.

Jacquii.

[tndowns1122]

@PoetJC Thanks. I really appreciate the nice comment. 

[coracleman]

actually as a welsh person, I liked it. Yes, DT was welsh - but he understood that the language of poetry is universal. He did not read or speak welsh - the language was undergoing something of a slump during his lifetime and was not widely in use in the area of Wales where he lived. However, I think there's a reason that there is not a welsh translation of UMW - it would not have the same resonance as it does in english. Good heartfelt delivery BTW!

coraclewoman

[Coldrid]

I am sorely disappointed by the reaction that this video has received. Dylan Thomas was a great and powerful poet; his words carry their force with any accent. If there was supposed to be a particularly secret Welsh spirit to it all, perhaps he would have written in Welsh - would you have understood it then? Strange that you talk of the "speakers of the language", when he plainly wrote it in English. I think that the reader here actually appreciated and enjoyed the work, enough to want to share.

[Pooknottin]

You are an excellent reader! You understand the poem well and read it with feeling! Dylan is a mystery to many, but you get him it's clear.

[osip7315]

very good reading thanx !

[gordbard52]

@vickiehill1 Whose lovely voice are you talking about?

[vickiehill1]

Now THAT friends...is one incredible poem! ......I am left breathless. I could see everything in my mind so clearly. Thank you to the poster & his lovely voice. This is a wonderful poem, poet & video.

[tndowns1122]

@Coldrid Thank you for the nice comment. I read this work because I like it a lot and thought it would be fun to share. I was surprised by some of the nasty comments I received after posting it--but I appreciate that you respected the effort. Thanks!

[6princeofdarkness]

very clear and very well read. it does lack dylans moody voice.....but still. very very nice!

[Jedermann101]

Masterful! A genius of imagination and expression! Honor to your memory DT!

Miguel

[birkenkrahe]

i also thought this was beautifully read.