Poem in October -- 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 the 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.