O IS FOR OCTOBER

October is long past but perhaps as we turn to and fro with April weather it would be good to look back for a moment to when we were anticipating winter even as now we are anticipating summer.


I found two wonderful things on the internet, and tho' I wanted to be original and post my own efforts I could not pass these by.

I have been unable to reach the owners of these to clear the copyrights, but I am hoping that since this is just a blog for sharing and with no commercial worth, (ha! would that it were ) I will give credit  to the owners with praise for their good taste and their part in bringing beauty to this world and promise to remove them if they feel it violates their trust.

AN OCTOBER TREE

What more is there to say?

(with credit to the Skull and Pumpkin Blog)

Poem in October

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.

Dylan Thomas, “Poem in October” from The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Used by permission of David Higham Associates, London as agents for the Trustees of the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas

Source: Poetry (February 1945).

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I have left these permission lines to give credit where credit is due though it is not true that permission was given to me, but to the owners of Poetry . QV

Commentary by Flamblogger

It is his birthday. The turning of thirty is a time for reflection.

He rises early and walks along the shore line, breathing in the long familiar sights and sounds of the harbor. A moment of nostalgia overwhelms him. The fishing nets are hung over the walls as usual, and the surge of the tide sucks at the mussels. Along the shoreline, the herons tall, thin and still, preside like priests who are hearing the prayers of the water. The call of the seagulls and rooks and the knocking of the wooden sail boats, side by side in the tide all remind him of how everything is as it has always been.

Yet he was turning thirty.

   

His thoughts take us through the day from the early morning when the town is sleeping, until the town begins to wake. Time is passing and he continues his walk past the borders of the town. Rain showers pass reminding him that he is "walking in the shower of all (his) days". The passing of his days stays foremost in his mind as the rainy day shifts from sun to showers, bringing shadows and sunlight in turn just as his thirty years had done.

His walk takes him from the sea shore through the lanes and woods with the weather as changeable as the views. The song birds urge him on up the hill to the patch of sunshine on its brow. In the distance he hears the rain and wind among the leaves of the trees now below him. He watches the misty rain drifting over the harbor. The town church with it spires is barely recognizable through the passing shower except to look like a looming snail.

Here beyond the edge of town he had thought to while away his birthday, dreaming of his days as a child with his mother. They were fruit-filled days of summer spent with a mother who is now no more. These thoughts of past happy times move him to tears just as he had wept at her loss then. Now those days are gone too.

His nostalgia returns. As a Welshman, he is reminded of the parables he once heard in chapel. On reflection his life seems to him to be a parable. The boy who once reveled in the woods, the river, and the sea, still remembers the 'summer of the dead'. Yet he remembers that even with this sorrow in his heart he had whispered then of the joy that he had found in all around him. So even today, that joy lifts his soul.

Now by noon-time he understands that that which surrounds him is still the same as when he was a child, but some things change as does the weather. The years will move on. The town below, wreathed in scarlet leaves readying for winter reminds him of his coming year. The seasons change, that is inevitable. The year ahead is already on its way. Everything else will still be here next year. Yet knowing how change comes, his deep desire is that he will not have changed and would still hold these truths in his heart.

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This is my contribution to ABC Wednesday, the extra-Ordinary project headed by  Mrs. Nesbitt and her wonderful team as we head into the home stretch of our ninth round.  Please click HERE to see more Out Of the Ordinary posts for the letter 'O'