POEMS
137
Without the occasional sound
Of wheels going roUlld,
Of trains going through,
Whistle, and hell,
I should not know where we were;
I should not know;
I should sleep too well.
But here by sad commuters compassed round
In the long tunnel,
In blown foul air, waiting the quickening sound
Of wheels going round, I have seen
Soiled paper, torn
Newspaper softly blown
Down the long tunnel, I have known
The vision of crumpled paper and cannot go home.
Dylan Thomas
BALLAD OF THE LONG-LEGGED BAIT
The bows glided down, and the
coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At
his thrashing hair and whale–
blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles
for luck.
Then goodbye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As
a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,
Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled
quay.
For my sake sail, and never look
back,
Said the looking land.
Sails drank the wind, and white as
milk
e sped into the drinking dark;
e sun shipwrecked west on a pearl
d the moon swam out of its hulk,
Funnels and masts went by in a
whirl.
Goodbye to the man on the sea–
legged deck
To the gold gut that sings on his
reel
To the bait that stalked out of the
sack,
For we saw him throw to the swift
flood
A girl alive with his hooks through
her lips:
All the fishs were rayed in blood,
Said the dwindling ships.
Goodbye to chimneys and funnels,
Old wives that spin in the smoke,
He was blind to the eyes of candles
In the praying windows of waves
But heard his bait buck in the wake
And tussle in a shoal of loves.
Now cast down your rod, for the
whole
Of the sea is hilly with whales,
