DYLAN THOMAS - 1914-1953. Welsh.

Dylan Thomas died fifty years ago this month, which feels strange because his work is so fresh and alive to us. His radio play, UNDER MILK WOOD, wrung out of him by a radio producer over a period of nine years, made radio history, and went on to be a successful stage play all around the world. Most of us know it through the memorable voice of Richard Burton.

Thomas was wild, romantic, impossible, a drunk and a womaniser, a bar room bully and quick with his temper and his fists. And he loved words.

We've featured him before in Poem of the Month, but for his anniversary, it feels like the right thing to do.

This is a poem I love, for its energy, its passion, and its memorable images. I know what the force is he talks about, live with it, fear it, love it, and am loved and destroyed by it too.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.