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Too Late Cock

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"CAPTAIN CAT
Too late, cock, too late
SECOND VOICE
for the town's half over with its morning. The morning's busy as bees.
FIRST VOICE
There's the clip clop of horses on the sunhoneyed cobbles
of the humming streets, hammering of horse- shoes, gobble
quack and cackle, tomtit twitter from the bird-ounced
boughs, braying on Donkey Down. Bread is baking, pigs are
grunting, chop goes the butcher, milk-churns bell, tills
ring, sheep cough, dogs shout, saws sing. Oh, the Spring
whinny and morning moo from the clog dancing farms, the
gulls' gab and rabble on the boat-bobbing river and sea
and the cockles bubbling in the sand, scamper of
sanderlings, curlew cry, crow caw, pigeon coo, clock
strike, bull bellow, and the ragged gabble of the
beargarden school as the women scratch and babble in Mrs
Organ Morgan's general shop where everything is sold:
custard, buckets, henna, rat-traps, shrimp-nets, sugar,
stamps, confetti, paraffin, hatchets, whistles."

Quote from "Under Milk Wood - A Play for Voices" by Dylan Thomas (1954)

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Listen to poem:
Too late Cock, too late, dawn missed. Your 'cock-a-doddle do' laments in the mist! For your alarm is set too late to matter, Too late, to make selfish greed smash and shatter. In days gone by, humankind once believed, That common good by proxy could be achieved. To stop climate change with a united stand. To end the endless wars that hate fanned. But when the day dawns it's all for one, Not one for all that we could become. The tragedy of the commons always has its sway And real hope of for change is swept away. For we always delay what we need to do, Until its too late, or almost too late to.

Copyright © | Year Posted 2024




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Book: Reflection on the Important Things