My Birthday

Today is my birthday. This is one of my favorite "birthday" poems. It is by Dylan Thomas:

_______

It was my thirtieth year to heaven

Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood   

      And the mussel pooled and the heron

                  Priested shore

            The morning beckon

With water praying and call of seagull and rook

And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall   

            Myself to set foot

                  That second

      In the still sleeping town and set forth.

      My birthday began with the water-

Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name   

      Above the farms and the white horses

                  And I rose   

            In rainy autumn

And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

High tide and the heron dived when I took the road

            Over the border

                  And the gates

      Of the town closed as the town awoke.

      A springful of larks in a rolling

Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling   

      Blackbirds and the sun of October

                  Summery

            On the hill’s shoulder,

Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly   

Come in the morning where I wandered and listened   

            To the rain wringing

                  Wind blow cold

      In the wood faraway under me.

      Pale rain over the dwindling harbour

And over the sea wet church the size of a snail   

      With its horns through mist and the castle   

                  Brown as owls

            But all the gardens

Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales   

Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.   

            There could I marvel

                  My birthday

      Away but the weather turned around.

      It turned away from the blithe country

And down the other air and the blue altered sky   

      Streamed again a wonder of summer

                  With apples

            Pears and red currants

And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s

Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother   

            Through the parables

                  Of sun light

      And the legends of the green chapels

      And the twice told fields of infancy

That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.   

      These were the woods the river and sea

                  Where a boy

            In the listening

Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy   

To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.

            And the mystery

                  Sang alive

      Still in the water and singingbirds.

      And there could I marvel my birthday

Away but the weather turned around. And the true   

      Joy of the long dead child sang burning

                  In the sun.

            It was my thirtieth

Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon   

Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.   

            O may my heart’s truth

                  Still be sung

      On this high hill in a year’s turning.

 

Photo by Bruce Barone.

 

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