This afternoon I watched a dramatized version of A Child’s Christmas In Wales (1955) by Dylan Thomas the renowned poet. I didn’t manage to watch the program consistently as there was a phone call and then a couple, very kindly, brought a ready-to-eat festive lunch for me. When I eventually returned to the TV I heard, …….‘I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept’ . Those were the closing lines of the story!
They speak to me and I hope they speak to you.
More and more I appreciate the ‘music’ of language and the facility it has to convey that which is not well approached through words.
A long time ago I used to have a lot to do with Swansea and would regularly pass Dylan Thomas’ parent’s home in the Uplands. That was the house he was remembering in “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”
I knew a lady in the town who at seventeen had been very actively ‘courted’ by Dylan. She worked in the local depot of W.H. Smith Wholesale and he used to hang out at Ralph’s bookshop across the road. Her dad warned her “Don’t ever let me catch you talking to that bad boy!” Another path not chosen there …
One of Dylan Thomas’ lines from the introduction to ‘Under Milk Wood is the quotation I’m using on the title page of my thesis
“Time passes. Listen. Time passes”
… ‘music of language’, some words are larger with other words …