Guest Observation: Dylan Thomas

The closing lines of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” My favorite part of one of my favorite poems. Merry Christmas, wherever you are on this Christmas night.

“… Always on Christmas night there was music.

An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang

‘Cherry Ripe,’ and another uncle sang ‘Drake’s Drum.’

It was very warm in the little house.

Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip

wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death,

and then another in which she said her heart

was like a Bird’s Nest; and then everybody

laughed again; and then I went to bed.

“Looking out my bedroom window, out into

the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow,

I could see the lights in the windows

of all the other houses on our hill and hear

the music rising from them up the long, steadily

falling night. I turned the gas down, I got

into bed. I said some words to the close and

holy darkness, and then I slept.”

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