Dylan Thomas as Orpheus (Ages Repeating)
Down, down, along the threefold rivers, float,
Windswept treasured wonders, of sad clown,
Complete with doubts, debts, and drunk-soaked coat,
Coiled tokens sold, for golden crown.
Moneyed gifts, soothing widow’s bitter tears,
Smoothing children’s sound tomorrows:
Hound dogs paid-off, as well sorrowing dears,
A lifetime’s struggle of constant borrows!
Look, look, the herons stalk, receiving bread
From swarming crowds, whom he once said,
Would flock, to flaunt their praises: all too late
For his gaunt-gout, and gaudier cold hate.
Clank, clank, boom links of poet’s heavy chains,
Sung to sea-maids, from his house on stilts,
Come, come, listen to cramped breathless strains,
Poet’s plaintive pleas: freed from guilt’s.
Hark, harken to those bloody barking dogs,
Knock, knocking loud and hard on Boathouse door
Chasing Orpheus with song into dour bogs,
Nigh upon his 39th year of spore!
Lost and longing far from weathered haven,
Yearning, ‘Buggerall’* world , of sodden Wales.
Bright son, fiercely eyed as black raven,
Urging his fragile health, track foreign trails !
Seeking wealth, exhausting poet’s tired wings.
Weep, weep for: “what might the neighbors think”
Mentality: where drink, forever clings,
Drowns Celtic sorrows: mourns lost link. . .
Woeful longings for things, in tidy homes.
Poet spun his tragic woven romance
Divine; meticulous molded icons,
Sculptured souls : defying decadence!
* = llareggub – ( invented by Dylan)
Myths and wondrous tales, of Merlin’s magic,
Celtic comedy; where Welsh mime rebounds
Timeless pith, of ancient rhetoric,
Birthed before Bible Black ‘nd White sounds.
Harmonies, pounding out sacred knowledge
Thru underground subconscious transit
Able to transcribe and write new presage:
Vision of collective cosmic spirit.
Genius stalks alone: ponders, perceives all,
Where cattle failed to recognize rare prize,
Oddity of humor and holy pierced gall -
Awkward albatross falling from Welsh skies.
Fellowmen find fault, asks wind to bellow sail:
Demanding deadlines of a snail’s slow pace
Whose speed could barely scribble words of wail:
Heavily draped and veiled in shapely grace.
Poet’s urge of ecstatic energy
Surpasses static human rational :
Town too local to escape easily -
Ruled by strict conventions: provincial.
Angry-voiced habits of teacher-father,
Highly inbred rhetoric preparing
To breed an intellectual scholar:
University degree: or nothing !
Alas, poets come programmed ripe from start,
Born to master and practice one mission:
Transmigrated scribes of poetic art,
Prophetic: caused father’s deep deception.
Rascal, scamp, precocious, headstrong vandal,
Quick to brag, steal, play controversial bard:
Promethean sea-giant: causing scandal
Offering spoiled sacrificial flesh to herd!
He was want to haunt sea-shores, to look
At old men, watching boats, coming in,
Going out, of the docks, where he took
Long walks; never swam, just watchin’.
Favorite past-time, spent studying Himself:
Serious, fastidiously intense, nervous:
Body became scrolled map on shelf
Packed to brim, with wit, as dying Orpheus.
Life believed, as living source of senses,
Expressed as representing everything
Found within the human body’s flashes:
Home of inspired universal offspring.
Opening and closing, as huge tidal waves
Full of emotion, rising and sinking:
Breathing inside nature’s pulsing enclaves:
Erotic passions forever creating.
Dylan’s plight of grown-up sadness: results,
Of childhood’s over-happy gladness,
Refusing to pardon ban by adults,
On children’s freedom, replaced by manliness.
Awful need of responsibility,
Curbing joy of succulent innocence,
Causing fiends to rob sensibility,
Leading him towards indecent nonsense.
Dragging feet deep into Hell’s darkness
Away from warmth of ‘mustard-seed sun’*
Pulling him out of light and brightness,
Causing decay like singing head of Brân!*
Dylan fed the cattle what they asked;
Of a poet’s soul: sacrificial flesh
Throwing in as bonus: an extra blast:
Lying, borrowing, and huge drunken mess.
*Dylan’s line * Brân of Welsh Romances
Wales, a land who never understood,
Or hailed, this son of the sea, gave him
Little to nourish and raise his brood,
Eyeing what their tidy lives, saw, as grim.
Womanizing, wicked-devil, with doubt,
Wrapped around maternal feathered-fussing,
Deeply ground within sad paternal clout,
Inherited gene of inbred drinking.
Above all else spoke with angel’s tongue,
After death became universal son!
Up till then poet to dull silences,
Who imposed deluge of social humdrum.
Drowning sorrows, as they listened to rhyme,
This his audience; entirely self-composed –
Not without a spark, of what we suppose,
Magic blending of something divine -
Before captivating voice, sublime !
Joining nostalgia of times, decomposed,
Easy to imagine, poet’s desire,
To create a world of something, other –
Than bleak reality of pub prattle?
Ethereal rhetoric rose above the mire,
Miming father’s incessant bother,
Claiming high grades from boys, as life-battle!
Nothing trivial in Dylan’s character,
Turbulent, troubled, spoiled, funny: spores
Piled high of puritan saws, as nurture:
Parental protection robbing youngster –
Whose imagination learned to ignore,
All and sundry, who didn’t bow to adore,
Sown seeds imbibed and stored inside nature:
Remnants of family fears of madness.
Well-known intermarriage of cousins: rife,
Insular-culture keen on preserving;
Roots and language, against foreign badness;
Traits and traces entwined inside a life.
Such bewildering boy, oh so charming:
Dylan, as magical singer: Orpheus,
Sappho, or Brân of the Mabinogion -
Whose singing head, buried in London.
Metamorphosed son of the sea, Proteus
Inventing outrageous tales: to seduce
Playmates, worthy of cloned sibling;
Born of a disillusioned man, winning –
Acclaim of pupils, as well, Icarus!
Metaphoric resemblance of Dylan
Burning wings in hell’s drunken fire: Welsh
Echo, of transmigration of past hero.
Not unlike Jean Vigo: who created –
Greatness out of conduct: graded zero!
Rebellious genius’ of saturated
Energy, seeking childhood’s lost echo.
Lurking behind a deal of Dylan’s work,
Looms his father’s voice, incredibly rich,
Oh high-standard English idiom, which irked –
Many colleagues of Welsh lilt and pitch.
Son likewise, had no trace of accent,
Added nothing to enhance his favor:
Countrymen denounced it as indecent –
Poets surely should nourish Welsh flavor?
Yet, should they have paid more attentive ear,
Would have caught sounds musical, which invoke
Image, colors, fraught with love of land, so dear !
Lauding druidic eloquence of yoke.
Absorb, what not many nations can claim,
As did this Orpheus, singing in his chains !
Great golden sea-horse in his silver cloak;
Who came to show us what not to seize -
Or leave undone, giving death’s dark chance, claims,
To advance: causing fiery flame to freeze:
Yet, do not grieve too long, for he lives on,
Poet’s sporous spirit reaches everyone.
In art, love, life, and death, his Orphic song
Posthumously spreads word he has BECOME!
