How Poetry Saved My Life (in London)

in cars, airports, airplanes, trains

this tote carried me and my goods

in iambic pentameter, Wallace Stevens,

I wish that I might be a thinking stone

 

(to admire far-below surroundings

of fair-furrowed hay-gold,

corn-green fields: why

you prospered, why

Saxons wanted you)

 

holiday humanity at the wax-works

shouting and camera-flash but here

in his corner, Dickens, and yea verily

Shakespeare, standing

 

then after the kerfuffle over Baker Street

while hungry, footsore we rattled

in the packed train all subterranean

children on our way to who knows

where or why: a song of apple boughs

pasted on the wall, Dylan Thomas,

and I was green and carefree

under the new made clouds

and happy as the heart was long

But Wishes Breed Not

Fallow time, moon-dark: no power

of words nor healing much less

smiles tears or beauty-making

(feeble light flickers in clouded lantern)

 

You know the black river under

starless skies ever cold and silent

No remedy but surrender

touch bottom (source-love)

and resurface

 

Title borrowed from “We Lying by Seasand,” by Dylan Thomas.

I would have taken you to Cymru, in the west

We’d rent a car and drive the wanderers’ roads

We’d seek the house where Dylan Thomas lived

 

We’d walk the fields of summer sheep-cropped green

Through gates and gaps in criss-crossed dry-stone walls

In the heart of hilly Cymru, in the west

 

I’d carry snacks and guidebook; you, the map

You’d ask about my work, and deep in talk

We’d seek the house where Dylan Thomas lived

 

You’d stop and smoke and gaze up at the crags

We’d argue myth and Merlin and gray kings

In the heart of hilly Cymru, in the west

 

We’d stop for a pint and just at end of day

In a salt-scrubbed scruffy village by the sea

We’d find the house where Dylan Thomas lived

 

We’d hear the local singers spin their tales

Of loves and feats of heroes long at rest

I would have taken you to Cymru, in the west

We’d find the house where Dylan Thomas lived