Written 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.
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
(A. D. 406)
"A Centurion of the Thirtieth" -- Puck of Pook's Hill
My father's father saw it not,
And I, belike, shall never come
To look on that so-holly spot--
That very Rome--
Crowned by all Time, all Art, all Might,
The equal work of Gods and Man,
City beneath whose oldest height--
The Race began!
Soon to send forth again a brood,
Unshakable, we pray, that clings
To Rome's thrice-hammered hardihood--
In arduous things.
Strong heart with triple armour bound,
Beat strongly, for thy life-blood runs,
Age after Age, the Empire round--
In us thy Sons
Who, distant from the Seven Hills,
Loving and serving much, require
Thee-thee to guard 'gainst home-born ills
The Imperial Fire!
|
Written by
David Lehman |
Eighty-one degrees a record high for the day
which is not my birthday but will do until
the eleventh of June comes around and I know
what I want: a wide-brimmed Panama hat
with a tan hatband, a walk in the park
and to share a shower with a zaftig beauty
who lost her Bronx accent in Bronxville
and now wants me to give her back her virginity
so she slinks into my office and sits on the desk
and I, to describe her posture and pose,
will trade my Blake (the lineaments of a gratified
desire) for your Herrick (the liquefaction of
her clothes) though it isn't my birthday and
we're not still in college it's just a cup of coffee
and a joint the hottest thirtieth of March I've ever
|
Written by
Barry Tebb |
Sorry, I almost forgot, but I don't think
Its worth the effort to become a Carcanet poet
With my mug-shot on art gloss paper
In your catalogue as big as Mont Blanc
Easier to imagine, as Benjamin Peret did,
A wind that would unscrew the mountain
Or stars like apricot tarts strolling
Aimlessly along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
|