On Beauty, Poetry and Autumn

A purely Icelandic summer evening in the late August can be very romance-inducing - wind putting feeble, scarce trees to the ground, howling above all limits of sanity, washing out any thought of opening the door, let alone going out. Rain (or, wait, was it snow) is beating the windows with the rage unknown in the rest of the world, slapping and stamping the last leaves on the sleek wet transparent surface, forcing them down to the bricked unyielding uncaring cold wall. No one is behind the windows, no one exists in the world, we are stuck inside.
 

And this is the perfect evening to go down with some "roistering, drunken and doomed poet" with some good whiskey (if I could ever drink any).  

Today it has been two years since I arrived at this proud little island.  

        ...O may my heart's truth 

                Still be sung

On this high hill in a year's turning. 

______

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 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.