Tuesday, January 11, 2005

A Dylan Thomas Song Cycle

Looking for Dylan Thomas' "On No Work Of Words", I find that Peter Dickinson (is this the Changes trilogy author? I hope so. And did you know he - the Changes guy I mean - is married to the children's books writer Robin McKinley? Ok I'll stop now) has composed a Dylan Thomas Song Cycle. Does anybody have this and do you know how to get hold of it?

And since I did find the Dylan Thomas, here it is. (Well take it as a promise of some sort. Though I gotta say - three months isn't bad.)

On No Work Of Words

On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody
Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body
I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:

To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given
Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,
The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.

To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death
That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath
And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.

To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.
Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas
If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.