(Off “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas)
Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Last Chance To See
We were all once young and easy… even under the heights and towers, or set down in the paved bounds of lawned desert, or conveyed to and fro past fields and edges on our carried ways…
As I was unaware and green, not seeing what was not there to be missed, but missing it anyhow, and carefree also under that same sun who is only once young,
Whispering in confidence with vacant lots’ “soon, soon,” and singing on footsteps over cracked concrete, I ran with the promise of more and better to come.
But debts to pay not yet mine already hedged the possible ground and shaped what I would find along the paths I traced in the dust and persistent weeds on the hills I climbed.
It was the stream that had been cut off in its bed, and all the trees gone.
And on occasion when I escaped the halls and noise and bells, feigning an illness as true as anything I knew, I dawdled my way homeward by unfamiliar streets through fenced neighborhoods,
Blessing the air as my heart rose to greet the warmth and color of an autumn sun, innocent of looming winter and the dread of swishing tires on snow mixed with grime.
It was a promise I heard told, that I would be one of the ones to know the longed-for end of indenture.
And, later, freed by green spring and golden summer, the threat of ruin that forces duty remaining at bay, far, far off in the distance, it was a direction from which I could turn away, to ignore
My small lordship extending a little way forward on the routes I ran, I could only benevolently rule I knew not what, or at times, at times, anguished in confused despite, marr the things before my hands, the things I touched.
“It was hot. I was tired and angry. I did not do well.”
Out away from the works of man, grace still lingered among the edge places, not as the invisible friend of a holy ghost, but stubbornly Present in sparrow and shrub, grasshopper and gartersnake, and peering through forbs and grasses, in the nervous noses of mice, the slow feet of the salamander, the ageless ephemera of insects…
Saplings from long-lodged or far-blown seed cryptically thriving in slow and steady growth in the midst of visibly unseen edge places, could only wait in vegetal patience upon the day of mending and return.
The Springtime wash of snowmelt coming off the High Ground an invocation or call with its the response in tall grasses, wildflowers and the restless bees becoming a wholeness impossible to contain, I rolled in temporary meadow ponds and dried myself, clothes and all, lying full length in the sunlight.
It was not turning Earth who forgot the time, singing in mammalian joy, the dusk of ending day.
It is not the moon who can forget the darkness before the dawn.
This One & This One 