Green fuses

Today's unremitting gales have done some damage to trees and shrubs around the place and I didn't venture far from home. It was the sort of day for making soup and sorting out spices (which takes a while: from ajowan to za'atar).

As I gathered fallen branches I noticed that the emergent daffodils were undeterred by the inclement weather and this clump had even undergone a watery birth through one of the unofficial ponds that have formed in the yard. The urgency of new shoots invariably brings to my mind Dylan Thomas's great poem about mortality.

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.

The power of the words mirrors the relentless forces of nature, all too often seen as gentle or peaceful. Rather, the acts of birth, sex and death are violent, explosive, propulsive while the energy of plants and fungi can dislodge buildings, lift paving stones, fell trees. Thomas's own creative forces drove him to behaviour which rendered him intolerable as a husband, father, friend, and ultimately destroyed him, yet no one can match him for verbal dynamite.

If you're interested you can compare his rendition of the poem with Richard Burton's and decide which one you prefer.