DYLAN'S SOLILOQUY

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 …

Dylan Thomas, ‘Poem in October’

An experiment in pastiche to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth.

‘Dylan Thomas, the other speaker on this occasion, was equally as evocative as Dr Sitwell, with his more rhetorical and annunciatory lines … “There were great oscillations of temperature … You knew there had once been warmth.” It was a joy and a privilege to hear the English language spoken with Dr Sitwell’s and Mr Thomas’s intense feeling for the beauty of words.’ (Neville Cardus, ‘The Story of Hiroshima in Music: Setting of Edith Sitwell’s “Shadow of Cain”’, Guardian, 18 November 1952)

Portrait of Dylan Thomas by Rupert Shephard, 1940