Poem in October
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas took a morning walk above a seaside town in his native Wales, tasting the first 30 years of his life. I love the music and the play of sound that Thomas wove into the poem. It seems to be discovery of how much he had carried with him from his youth. He recognized the quiet power of nature, the changes he had experienced, and the mysteries that his mother showed him as a child. The images are powerful – the rising, the growing distance of the town and harbor, the birdlife, the rain, the orchards.
Dennis Noren
Software Engineer
Board Member, Poetry Center San Jose
Campbell
Poem in October
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 net 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 rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a 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 sun light
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 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 singingbirds.
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.
Dylan Thomas
1914-1953
Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Blog 
What incredible imagery for eye and ear. Thanks for sharing.
I like the way the rain takes on meaning–”a shower of all my days”
and the depth of feeling behind the repeated phrase “the weather turned around.”
You feel his whole life is encapsulated in the landscape, as well as in this poem. Thanks for sharing it.
Dennis, what a nice intro to Dylan Thomas’ poem, and what a lovely poem. Thank you. I’m tempted to dig up my copy of Dylan’s work and browse through it.