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the sunny slow lulling afternoon - dylan thomas lyrics

[a silence]

first voice the sunny slow lulling afternoon yawns and moons through the dozy town. the sea lolls, laps and idles in, with fishes sleeping in its lap. the meadows still as sunday, the shut-eye t-sselled bulls, the goat-anddaisy dingles, nap happy and lazy. the dumb duck-ponds snooze. clouds sag and pillow on llaregyb hill. pigs grunt in a wet wallow-bath, and smile as they snort and dream. they dream of the acorned swill of the world, the rooting for pig-fruit, the bagpipe dugs of the mother sow, the squeal and snuffle of yesses of the women pigs in rut. they mud-bask and snout in the pig-loving sun; their tails curl; they rollick and slobber and snore to deep, smug, after-swill sleep. donkeys angelically drowse on donkey down.

mrs pugh persons with manners,

second voice snaps mrs cold pugh,

mrs pugh do not nod at table.

first voice mr pugh cringes awake. he puts on a soft-soaping smile: it is sad and grey under his nicotine-eggyellow weeping walrus victorian moustache worn thick and long in memory of doctor crippen.

mrs pugh you should wait until you retire to your sty,

second voice says mrs pugh, sweet as a razor. his fawning measly quarter-smile freezes. sly and silent, he foxes into his chemist’s den and there, in a hiss and prussic circle of cauldrons and phials brimful with pox and the black death, cooks up a fric-ssee of deadly nightshade, nicotine, hot frog, cyanide and bat-spit for his needling stalact-te hag and bednag of a pokerbacked nutcracker wife.

mr pugh i beg your pardon, my dear,

second voice he murmurs with a wheedle.

first voice captain cat, at his window thrown wide to the sun and the clippered seas he sailed long ago when his eyes were blue and bright, slumbers and voyages; ear-ringed and rolling, i love you rosie probert tattooed on his belly, he brawls with broken bottles in the fug and babel of the dark dock bars, roves with a herd of short and good time cows in every naughty port and twines and souses with the drowned and blowzy-breasted dead. he weeps as he sleeps and sails.

second voice one voice of all he remembers most dearly as his dream buckets down. lazy early rosie with the flaxen thatch, whom he shared with tom-fred the donkeyman and many another seaman, clearly and near to him speaks from the bedroom of her dust. in that gulf and haven, fleets by the dozen have anch-r-d for the little heaven of the night; but she speaks to captain napping cat alone. mrs probert…

rosie probert from duck lane, jack. quack twice and ask for rosie

second voice …is the one love of his sea-life that was sardined with women.

rosie probert (softly) what seas did you see, tom cat, tom cat, in your sailoring days long long ago? what sea beasts were in the wavery green when you were my master?

captain cat i’ll tell you the truth. seas barking like seals, blue seas and green, seas covered with eels and mermen and whales.

rosie probert what seas did you sail old whaler when on the blubbery waves between frisco and wales you were my bosun?

captain cat as true as i’m here dear you tom cat’s tart you landlubber rosie you cosy love my easy as easy my true sweetheart, seas green as a bean seas gliding with swans in the seal-barking moon.

rosie probert what seas were rocking my little deck hand my favourite husband in your seaboots and hunger my duck my whaler my honey my daddy my pretty sugar sailor. with my name on your belly when you were a boy long long ago?

captain cat i’ll tell you no lies. the only sea i saw was the seesaw sea with you riding on it. lie down, lie easy. let me shipwreck in your thighs.

rosie probert, knock twice, jack, at the door of my grave and ask for rosie.

captain cat rosie probert.

rosie probert remember her. she is forgetting. the earth which filled her mouth is vanishing from her. remember me. i have forgotten you. i am going into the darkness of the darkness for ever. i have forgotten that i was ever born.

child look,

first voice says a child to her mother as they p-ss by the window of schooner house,

child captain cat is crying

first voice captain cat is crying

captain cat come back, come back,

first voice up the silences and echoes of the p-ssages of the eternal night.

child he’s crying all over his nose,

first voice says the child. mother and child move on down the street.

child he’s got a nose like strawberries,

first voice the child says ; and then she forgets him too. she sees in the still middle of the bluebagged bay nogood boyo fishing from the zanzibar.

child nogood boyo gave me three pennies yesterday but i wouldn’t,

first voice the child tells her mother.

second voice boyo catches a whalebone corset. it is all he has caught all day.

nogood boyo bl–dy funny fish!

second voice

mrs dai bread two gypsies up his mind’s slow eye, dressed only in a bangle.

nogood boyo she’s wearing her nightgown. (pleadingly) would you like this nice wet corset, mrs dai bread two?

mrs dai bread two no, i won’t!

nogood boyo and a bite of my little apple?

second voice

he offers with no hope.

first voice she shakes her br-ss nightgown, and he chases her out of his mind; and when he comes gusting back, there in the bloodshot centre of his eye a geisha girl grins and bows in a kimono of ricepaper.

nogood boyo i want to be good boyo, but n-body’ll let me,

first voice he sighs as she writhes politely. the land fades, the sea flocks silently away; and through the warm white cloud where he lies, silky, tingling, uneasy eastern music undoes him in a japanese minute.

second voice the afternoon buzzes like lazy bees round the flowers round mae rose cottage. nearly asleep in the field of nannygoats who hum and gently b-tt the sun, she blows love on a puffball.

mae rose cottage (lazily) he loves me he loves me not he loves me he loves me not he loves me!–the dirty old fool.

second voice lazy she lies alone in clover and sweet-gr-ss, seventeen and never been sweet in the gr-ss ho ho.

first voice the reverend eli jenkins inky in his cool front parlour or poem-room tells only the truth in his lifework–the population, main industry, shipping, history, topography, flora and fauna of the town he worships in–the white book of llaregyb. portraits of famous bards and preachers, all fur and wool from the squint to the kneecaps, hang over him heavy as sheep, next to faint lady watercolours of pale green milk wood like a lettuce salad dying. his mother, propped against a pot in a palm, with her wedding-ring waist and bust like a black-clothed dining-table suffers in her stays.

rev. eli jenkins oh angels be careful there with your knives and forks,

first voice he prays. there is no known likeness of his father esau, who, undogcollared because of his little weakness, was scythed to the bone one harvest by mistake when sleeping with his weakness in the corn. he lost all ambition and died, with one leg.

rev. eli jenkins poor dad,

second voice grieves the reverend eli,

rev. eli jenkins to die of drink and agriculture.

second voice farmer watkins in salt lake farm hates his cattle on the hill as he ho’s them in to milking.

utah watkins (in a fury) d-mn you, you d-mned dairies!

second voice a cow kisses him.

utah watkins bite her to death!

second voice he shouts to his deaf dog who smiles and licks his hands.

utah watkins gore him, sit on him, daisy!

second voice he bawls to the cow who barbed him with her tongue, and she moos gentle words as he raves and dances among his summerbreathed slaves walking delicately to the farm. the coming of the end of the spring day is already reflected in the lakes of their great eyes. bessie bighead greets them by the names she gave them when they were maidens.

bessie bighead peg, meg, b-ttercup, moll, fan from the castle, theodosia and daisy.

second voice they bow their heads.

first voice look up bessie bighead in the white book of llaregyb and you will find the few haggard rags and the one poor glittering thread of her history laid out in pages there with as much love and care as the lock of hair of a first lost love. conceived in milk wood, born in a barn, wrapped in paper, left on a doorstep, bigheaded and b-ss-voiced she grew in the dark until long-dead gomer owen kissed her when she wasn’t looking because he was dared. now in the light she’ll work, sing, milk, say the cows’ sweet names and sleep until the night sucks out her soul and spits it into the sky. in her life-long low light, holily bessie milks the fond lake-eyed cows as dusk showers slowly down over byre, sea and town.

utah watkins curses through the farmyard on a carthorse.

utah watkins gallop, you bleeding cripple!

first voice and the huge horse neighs softly as though he had given it a lump of sugar.

- dylan thomas lyrics

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