One Poem at a Time -4-

This poem is not gentle. I always feel a bit bruised on reading it.  But the language is so delicious, so cosmically expansive that for me it’s like a fiery Szechuan dish spiced to the point of pain but whose flavor is so sumptuous I am seduced to return to it again and again.

                                                              -Jane

The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower                                                                                                                                                    by Dylan Thomas

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.

 

 

 

[Listen to Charles Wright read his “When You’re Lost in Juarez in the Rain and It’s Easter Time Too”]