Where Have All the Old Words Got Me
[Where Have the Old Words Got Me?: Explications of Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems, 1934-1953] [Author: Ralph Maud] [February 2003]
Some of the rest I must use;
they are jeans and sweats; they are what we
forget about as symbols.
Many have been scrubbed and dyed colorless.
Some died of poverty and misuse.
We are newly comprehensible only in alterations.
The seam resewn adds threads and new flavors,
Old words are not our deliverance, they are new graves.
Where have the old words taken me?
The old words sill pimp sounds
as if in payment for accessibility. Some ply
rhymes and dangle pretty chimes
and there’s the pity.
Let me not lure you into understanding
by a worn-out rote.
It is not 'I' that confuse, it is the throat of an owl
that exhausts fresh songs.
Nothing has meaning now, unless it be new wine.
Old words must be beaten fine upon an anvil;
hung around a hooting neck
until a clearly obvious bone -
breaks.
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