Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water’s speeches.
Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour’s word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow’s signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven’s sins.
Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea’s side hear the dark-vowelled birds.
I doubt many of us feel such a physical connection to our origins? The savage intimacy Dylan Thomas describes in this poem seems both ancient and yet immediate. Every experience of nature is intense. Like been grabbbed and pummelled and yet for all this physicality, there exists a tenderness that goes to the depths of the earth and creatures. For Thomas reveals himself to be a creature.
A fighting and grappling creature with all the disturbances of being here; of being alive but knowing that such life counts as mere nothingness against the ageless history of the planet earth.
So much natural agitation is evoked here. I love the opening where Thomas describes the October wind:
‘with frost fingers punishes my hair.’
We feel threatened pleasure. Spectral Gothic hauntings which yet have the power to make our very presence antagonist yet yearning!
And how affectingly revealing the ‘tower of words’! Babel and Babble…why even T S Eliot’s J Alfred prufrock is taking a brief stroll through Thomas’s horizons.
Catches at your throat and heart.
I always have loved this poem, probably representing his author at all, but only now i understand a little more why. I realize now this connection with the creatural vision.
Sorry, i don’t know very well the English to express my tought.
I merely wanted to thank you for your suggestion.
I wish you the best,
Daniele Moretto