Botol Anggur dan Buih-Buih Puisi
TAK ada seorang penyair Wales yang begitu banyak menggugah para penyanyi Inggris, selain Dylan Marlais Thomas. Dia dilahirkan di kota kecil, Swansea, sebelah selatan Wales, Inggris, 27 Oktober 1914 . Ayahnya bernama D.J. Thomas, guru senior Bahasa Inggris di Swansea. Sedangkan ibunya adalah penjahit. Sejak berusia sebelas tahun, Dylan sudah mulai menulis puisi. Sejumlah puisi biasanya dipamerkan ke sejumlah bocah sebayanya ketika berlibur di pertanian milik bibinya. Liburan itulah yang menginsipirasi Dylan menulis sebuah puisi terkenalnya, Bukit Pakis.
Ada kebiasaan buruk yang menghinggapi Dylan sejak berumur 15 tahun. Meski masih tergolong remaja, Dylan mulai doyan mencicipi "air api". Tak jarang pula, ia mengajak sejumlah rekan sebayanya mabuk-mabukan di sebuah bar di Kota Swansea. Sayangnya, untuk memenuhi kebiasaan buruknya itu, Dylan masih kerap meminta uang dari keluarga atau teman-temannya.
Ketika menginjak usia ke-17, Dylan meninggalkan bangku sekolah. Dia memilih bekerja sebagai reporter muda di koran sore lokal, The South Evening Post. Ternyata, Dylan tak cocok di bidang jurnalistik. Dia tak meraih sukses sebagai wartawan. Terkadang dia meninggalkan peliputan hanya untuk pergi ke bar, bersama sejumlah sahabatnya. Sejak itulah, Dylan tak peduli lagi dengan pekerjaanya. Dylan mulai menjadi pemberang.
Dua tahun kemudian, Dylan mengikutsertakan kumpulan puisinya dalam kompetisi yang diadakan British Broadcasting Corporation. Para juri terkesan oleh karya-karya Dylan. Kesempatan emas pertama diraih Dylan. Dia menang dan kemudian membacakan kumpulan puisinya di depan corong radio BBC yang didengar langsung seantero Inggris. Seiring sukses perdana tersebut, Dylan pun meninggalkan kota kelahirannya menuju London pada 1934.
Tak lama kemudian, kumpulan puisi Dylan diterbitkan. Buku puisi pertama Dylan itu berjudul Delapan Belas Puisi. Seorang penyair muda Inggris lahirlah sudah. Dahsyatnya, ia masih berusia belia buat ukuran seorang penyair ternama, yakni 20 tahun.
Buku kumpulan puisi Dylan itu jelas mengundang kontroversi. Namun, justru itulah yang kemudian memuluskan Dylan ke tangga ketenaran. Walau demikian, penyakit lama Dylan kambuh lagi. Terlebih, kehidupan kota besar semacam London. Bar ada di mana-mana. Dalam menciptakan puisi, tak terhitung lagi botol minuman keras yang ditenggak habis olehnya. Semakin ia teler, semakin bagus pula puisinya seolah tercipta dari buih-buih botol alkoholnya. Puisinya banyak bersuara akan arti kehidupan, tentunya, dalam sudut pandangnya.
Pada April 1936, Dylan bertemu dengan jodohnya, Caitlin Macnamara. Gadis pujaannya itu adalah seorang penari muda. Dan, setahun kemudian, mereka menikah dan menetap di Kota Laugharne, Wales. Setelah mengecap bulan madu nan indah, BBC kembali meminta Dylan membacakan puisi di corong radio secara langsung. Dylan pun semakin tenar.
Zaman berubah, Perang Dunia II berkobar. Meski tak menyetujui pertempuran tersebut, Dylan akhirnya maju ke medan laga. Kendati demikian, ia hanya mau bekerja untuk suatu tim dokumenter perang. Dia pun mengabadikan perang dari sudut mata hatinya. Penderitaan akibat perang ada dalam semua pengambilan gambarnya.
Perang berakhir, Dylan melanjutkan hidupnya. Ia terus berkarya. Sepanjang hidupnya, Dylan juga menerbitkan sejumlah cerita pendek, menulis skenario film, cerita radio, dan menulis soal radio. Beberapa karya yang terkenal adalah Dua Puluh Lima Puisi (1936), Peta Cinta (1939), Pintu Dunia (1946), dan Di Negeri Tidur dan Puisi Lain (1952). Karya-karya Dylan boleh dibilang memadukan unsur tradisional dan keruwetan cinta bercampur prahara kematian.
Rupanya, Dylan mulai mempertanyakan kebenaran akan dogma agama yang diperolehnya selama ini. Terutama membandingkan dasar ketidaksesuaian antara legenda, astronomi, sihir, simbol Tuhan, dan psikologi. Akan tetapi, Dylan cerdas memilih untaian kata, gaya bertutur, dan mengemas itu semua dengan bahasa puisi. Barang kali, inilah yang menyebabkan dia termasuk penyair terbesar dalam abad 20.
Dylan semakin terkenal dan kaya, tak cuma di Inggris. Namun, seiring pundi-pundi uang yang terus bertambah, Dylan juga tak dapat meninggalkan kecintaan akan alkohol. Akan tetapi, Dylan terus menggoreskan pena dan menciptakan puisi-puisi indah lainnya. Tak sia-sia, Dylan pun mendapat kehormatan. Pada tahun 1953, ia diundang ke Amerika Serikat. Di Benua Impian dan Kebebasan itu, banyak tur atau pembacaan puisi yang dilakukan Dylan. Pada pementasan keempat di Universitas Harvard, Dylan memelopori pembacaan tunggal puisi dengan diiringi suara tambahan. Puisi yang dibacakan bertajuk Di Bawah Kayu Susu. Pementasan Dylan pun mendapat sambutan gegap-gempita dari civitas Harvard.
Sayang, pementasan nan gemilang itu berakhir duka. Penyair mabuk itu tak kuat menopang tubuhnya lagi. Dylan roboh di hotelnya dan langsung dilarikan ke Rumah Sakit Saint Vincent di New York. Tanggal 9 November 1953, ia mengembuskan napas terakhir. Kematiannya hanya berselang beberapa hari setelah merayakan ulang tahunnya ke-39. Para dokter menyimpulkan kematian penyair terkenal itu akibat keracunan alkohol.
Jenazah Dylan kemudian dipulangkan ke kediamannya di Laugharne. Warga Wales berduka. Seorang penyair besar mereka, meski penuh kontroversi, telah tiada.(ANS/Berbagai Sumber)
Prologue
by: Dylan Thomas
This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill! Look:
I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms
To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
In the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise,
Who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogsback woods! The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors, finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work art and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move,
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my proud dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.
*******
Fern Hill
by: Dylan Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
******
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.
**********
Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
by: Dylan Thomas
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
*******
Elegy
by: Dylan Thomas
Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow
Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast
Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,
I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead
Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,
I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,
Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.
The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.
Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the liught of the lording sky
An old man is with me where I go
Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'
Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.
O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.
Until I die he will not leave my side.)
********
A Process in The Weather of The Heart
by: Dylan Thomas
A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.
A process in the eye forwarns
the bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.
A darkness in the weather of the eye
Is half its light; the fathomed sea
Breaks on unangled land.
The seed that makes a forest of the loin
Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,
Slow in a sleeping wind.
A weather in the flesh and bone
Is damp and dry; the quick and dead
Move like two ghosts before the eye.
A process in the weather of the world
Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child
Sits in their douible shade.
A process blows the moon into the sun,
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin;
And the heart gives up its dead.
*******
Before I Knocked
by: Dylan Thomas
Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
Was brother to Mnetha’s daughter
And sister to the fathering worm.
I who was deaf to spring and summer,
Who knew not sun nor moon by name,
Felt thud beneath my flesh’s armour,
As yet was in a molten form,
The leaden stars, the rainy hammer
Swung by my father from his dome.
I knew the message of the winter,
The darted hail, the childish snow,
And the wind was my sister suitor;
Wind in me leaped, the hellborn dew;
My veins flowed with the Eastern weather;
Ungotten I knew night and day.
As yet ungotten, I did suffer;
The rack of dreams my lily bones
Did twist into a living cipher,
And flesh was snipped to cross the lines
Of gallow crosses on the liver
And brambles in the wringing brains.
My throat knew thirst before the structure
Of skin and vein around the well
Where words and water make a mixture
Unfailing till the blood runs foul;
My heart knew love, my belly hunger;
I smelt the maggot in my stool.
And time cast forth my mortal creature
To drift or drown upon the seas
Acquainted with the salt adventure
Of tides that never touch the shores.
I who was rich was made the richer
By sipping at the sine of days.
I, born of flesh and ghost, was neither
A ghost nor man, but mortal ghost.
And I was struck down by death’s feather.
I was a mortal to the last
Long breath that carried to my father
The message of his dying christ.
You who bow down at cross and altar,
Remember me and pity Him
Who took my flesh and bone for armour
And doublecrossed my mother’s womb.
******
Poem in October
by: Dylan Thomas
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and the sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
*******
TAK ada seorang penyair Wales yang begitu banyak menggugah para penyanyi Inggris, selain Dylan Marlais Thomas. Dia dilahirkan di kota kecil, Swansea, sebelah selatan Wales, Inggris, 27 Oktober 1914 . Ayahnya bernama D.J. Thomas, guru senior Bahasa Inggris di Swansea. Sedangkan ibunya adalah penjahit. Sejak berusia sebelas tahun, Dylan sudah mulai menulis puisi. Sejumlah puisi biasanya dipamerkan ke sejumlah bocah sebayanya ketika berlibur di pertanian milik bibinya. Liburan itulah yang menginsipirasi Dylan menulis sebuah puisi terkenalnya, Bukit Pakis.
Ada kebiasaan buruk yang menghinggapi Dylan sejak berumur 15 tahun. Meski masih tergolong remaja, Dylan mulai doyan mencicipi "air api". Tak jarang pula, ia mengajak sejumlah rekan sebayanya mabuk-mabukan di sebuah bar di Kota Swansea. Sayangnya, untuk memenuhi kebiasaan buruknya itu, Dylan masih kerap meminta uang dari keluarga atau teman-temannya.
Ketika menginjak usia ke-17, Dylan meninggalkan bangku sekolah. Dia memilih bekerja sebagai reporter muda di koran sore lokal, The South Evening Post. Ternyata, Dylan tak cocok di bidang jurnalistik. Dia tak meraih sukses sebagai wartawan. Terkadang dia meninggalkan peliputan hanya untuk pergi ke bar, bersama sejumlah sahabatnya. Sejak itulah, Dylan tak peduli lagi dengan pekerjaanya. Dylan mulai menjadi pemberang.
Dua tahun kemudian, Dylan mengikutsertakan kumpulan puisinya dalam kompetisi yang diadakan British Broadcasting Corporation. Para juri terkesan oleh karya-karya Dylan. Kesempatan emas pertama diraih Dylan. Dia menang dan kemudian membacakan kumpulan puisinya di depan corong radio BBC yang didengar langsung seantero Inggris. Seiring sukses perdana tersebut, Dylan pun meninggalkan kota kelahirannya menuju London pada 1934.
Tak lama kemudian, kumpulan puisi Dylan diterbitkan. Buku puisi pertama Dylan itu berjudul Delapan Belas Puisi. Seorang penyair muda Inggris lahirlah sudah. Dahsyatnya, ia masih berusia belia buat ukuran seorang penyair ternama, yakni 20 tahun.
Buku kumpulan puisi Dylan itu jelas mengundang kontroversi. Namun, justru itulah yang kemudian memuluskan Dylan ke tangga ketenaran. Walau demikian, penyakit lama Dylan kambuh lagi. Terlebih, kehidupan kota besar semacam London. Bar ada di mana-mana. Dalam menciptakan puisi, tak terhitung lagi botol minuman keras yang ditenggak habis olehnya. Semakin ia teler, semakin bagus pula puisinya seolah tercipta dari buih-buih botol alkoholnya. Puisinya banyak bersuara akan arti kehidupan, tentunya, dalam sudut pandangnya.
Pada April 1936, Dylan bertemu dengan jodohnya, Caitlin Macnamara. Gadis pujaannya itu adalah seorang penari muda. Dan, setahun kemudian, mereka menikah dan menetap di Kota Laugharne, Wales. Setelah mengecap bulan madu nan indah, BBC kembali meminta Dylan membacakan puisi di corong radio secara langsung. Dylan pun semakin tenar.
Zaman berubah, Perang Dunia II berkobar. Meski tak menyetujui pertempuran tersebut, Dylan akhirnya maju ke medan laga. Kendati demikian, ia hanya mau bekerja untuk suatu tim dokumenter perang. Dia pun mengabadikan perang dari sudut mata hatinya. Penderitaan akibat perang ada dalam semua pengambilan gambarnya.
Perang berakhir, Dylan melanjutkan hidupnya. Ia terus berkarya. Sepanjang hidupnya, Dylan juga menerbitkan sejumlah cerita pendek, menulis skenario film, cerita radio, dan menulis soal radio. Beberapa karya yang terkenal adalah Dua Puluh Lima Puisi (1936), Peta Cinta (1939), Pintu Dunia (1946), dan Di Negeri Tidur dan Puisi Lain (1952). Karya-karya Dylan boleh dibilang memadukan unsur tradisional dan keruwetan cinta bercampur prahara kematian.
Rupanya, Dylan mulai mempertanyakan kebenaran akan dogma agama yang diperolehnya selama ini. Terutama membandingkan dasar ketidaksesuaian antara legenda, astronomi, sihir, simbol Tuhan, dan psikologi. Akan tetapi, Dylan cerdas memilih untaian kata, gaya bertutur, dan mengemas itu semua dengan bahasa puisi. Barang kali, inilah yang menyebabkan dia termasuk penyair terbesar dalam abad 20.
Dylan semakin terkenal dan kaya, tak cuma di Inggris. Namun, seiring pundi-pundi uang yang terus bertambah, Dylan juga tak dapat meninggalkan kecintaan akan alkohol. Akan tetapi, Dylan terus menggoreskan pena dan menciptakan puisi-puisi indah lainnya. Tak sia-sia, Dylan pun mendapat kehormatan. Pada tahun 1953, ia diundang ke Amerika Serikat. Di Benua Impian dan Kebebasan itu, banyak tur atau pembacaan puisi yang dilakukan Dylan. Pada pementasan keempat di Universitas Harvard, Dylan memelopori pembacaan tunggal puisi dengan diiringi suara tambahan. Puisi yang dibacakan bertajuk Di Bawah Kayu Susu. Pementasan Dylan pun mendapat sambutan gegap-gempita dari civitas Harvard.
Sayang, pementasan nan gemilang itu berakhir duka. Penyair mabuk itu tak kuat menopang tubuhnya lagi. Dylan roboh di hotelnya dan langsung dilarikan ke Rumah Sakit Saint Vincent di New York. Tanggal 9 November 1953, ia mengembuskan napas terakhir. Kematiannya hanya berselang beberapa hari setelah merayakan ulang tahunnya ke-39. Para dokter menyimpulkan kematian penyair terkenal itu akibat keracunan alkohol.
Jenazah Dylan kemudian dipulangkan ke kediamannya di Laugharne. Warga Wales berduka. Seorang penyair besar mereka, meski penuh kontroversi, telah tiada.(ANS/Berbagai Sumber)
Prologue
by: Dylan Thomas
This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill! Look:
I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms
To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
In the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise,
Who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogsback woods! The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors, finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work art and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move,
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my proud dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.
*******
Fern Hill
by: Dylan Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
******
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.
**********
Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
by: Dylan Thomas
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
*******
Elegy
by: Dylan Thomas
Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow
Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast
Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,
I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead
Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,
I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,
Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.
The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.
Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the liught of the lording sky
An old man is with me where I go
Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'
Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.
O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.
Until I die he will not leave my side.)
********
A Process in The Weather of The Heart
by: Dylan Thomas
A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.
A process in the eye forwarns
the bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.
A darkness in the weather of the eye
Is half its light; the fathomed sea
Breaks on unangled land.
The seed that makes a forest of the loin
Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,
Slow in a sleeping wind.
A weather in the flesh and bone
Is damp and dry; the quick and dead
Move like two ghosts before the eye.
A process in the weather of the world
Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child
Sits in their douible shade.
A process blows the moon into the sun,
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin;
And the heart gives up its dead.
*******
Before I Knocked
by: Dylan Thomas
Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
Was brother to Mnetha’s daughter
And sister to the fathering worm.
I who was deaf to spring and summer,
Who knew not sun nor moon by name,
Felt thud beneath my flesh’s armour,
As yet was in a molten form,
The leaden stars, the rainy hammer
Swung by my father from his dome.
I knew the message of the winter,
The darted hail, the childish snow,
And the wind was my sister suitor;
Wind in me leaped, the hellborn dew;
My veins flowed with the Eastern weather;
Ungotten I knew night and day.
As yet ungotten, I did suffer;
The rack of dreams my lily bones
Did twist into a living cipher,
And flesh was snipped to cross the lines
Of gallow crosses on the liver
And brambles in the wringing brains.
My throat knew thirst before the structure
Of skin and vein around the well
Where words and water make a mixture
Unfailing till the blood runs foul;
My heart knew love, my belly hunger;
I smelt the maggot in my stool.
And time cast forth my mortal creature
To drift or drown upon the seas
Acquainted with the salt adventure
Of tides that never touch the shores.
I who was rich was made the richer
By sipping at the sine of days.
I, born of flesh and ghost, was neither
A ghost nor man, but mortal ghost.
And I was struck down by death’s feather.
I was a mortal to the last
Long breath that carried to my father
The message of his dying christ.
You who bow down at cross and altar,
Remember me and pity Him
Who took my flesh and bone for armour
And doublecrossed my mother’s womb.
******
Poem in October
by: Dylan Thomas
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and the sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
*******
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