On Walking with Dylan Thomas
 

Honoured among foxes that thieve in heaven
I stole images, breeding the absurd,
creating contradictions with a pen.
There, my nib would hold a blooded word,
ungentled and hungry to hunt again.

The sudden gulls were crowded loud in screams,
over sea-wrack crackling on the stone,
there shadows shied into a warping eye,
a gibbous moon, its pearling of green bone,
cupped gently in a deep and velvet sky.

Across the strait the past is yet to fall.
High on the ragged bone of histories
an upright figure calls above the deep.
Old words cast out on dark and hungry seas
that eat the shore and leave the rock to weep.

I walked easy where the cold water preyed
along the priested shores and mussel muse.
There, a sea-wet church on ocean mud
caught the morning sun with its burning news
and lit the broken cross and fallen blood.

A clump of lime-washed clom and rubble stone,
the fishing village, eyes blind to windward
slow-spill their morning men into the dawn.
The trawlers rise, the tide is on the flood
and dreams of living-silver hauls are born.

Hi Jan,

This is quite to my tastes. Beautiful language throughout. A nice homage.

All the best,
Jim

Hello Jan,

Although I'm still not exactly understanding everything that is going on in here, the language was alluring enough to cause me to read it three times.

"Ungentled" is a nice word for a Thomas allusion.

I loved "a sea-wet church on ocean mud..." And where "blood" can frequently be melodramatic, for me, your use of "the broken cross and fallen blood" both had a satisfying rhyme-ring to it and a sense that it was fitting/justified by the language and scenes around it; it didn't fall too heavy, but just right.

I wasn't sure what a clump of "clom" might be. I don't mind at all having to look up one or a couple words for a poem that is evocative enough. In fact, I think it's the only way to ensure that our language doesn't continue to decline into complete unloveliness. But in a final stanza might not be the ideal place for an unusual word. I'm not sure if "clom" is an unusual word or if my ignorance is just showing! Unfortunately, nothing helpful came up when I searched for a definition, until I guessed to search "define clom english" which brought up this on Wikitionary, which sounded like it might be the right one?: "clom (uncountable) A mixture of earth, straw, etc. used in traditional Welsh construction."


Take care,
Chelsea

Hi Jan, this is lovely.

I have some qualms about some of the distinctive phrases that are lifted right out of Thomas – “priested shore” and “sea-wet church” among them. I know we have debated before about what a poetic homage should entail. When I read a poem that's in dialogue with another poet, I still want to read fresh language, or, if it’s language clearly referencing the other poet’s work, it needs to be significantly transformed, and just dropping “heron” from something as distinctive as “heron-priested shore” isn’t doing it for me. But that’s me. I think your own language is striking enough and you don’t need to lean so heavily on borrowings.

“Clom” brought up the Wikipedia entry on cob when I googled it, so I didn’t have any trouble there.

Hello again Jan and Hilary,

Hi Chelsea and Hilary,

The cottage walls are made in ways that are common to most of the world and clom is the Welsh name for that technique.

They are not lifts or quotes as I use them, they are markers and a form of homage. We often mimic those we are close to.

As far as recognition is concerned our canons do differ.


Jan

The opening “Honoured among foxes” is a direct lift from Fern Hill. But the narrator makes it clear at that point that he is stealing stuff, so… fair enough.

I think the poem works well, using Thomas like alliteration, and animated nouns, but also painting original sharp and surprising images.

I was a little less sure about the final stanza. The fishermen appear to be the progeny of the rubble, the village and the blind eyes, which I had difficulty fitting together,

Joe

I'm with Joe on this. And I think there's some singular / plural confusion in the final stanza. Cleared up, that might work better.

I did enjoy it, though.

Cheers

David