The Frank Skinner Show - Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast: Dylan Thomas

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Frank spends the night in Dylan Thomas' bedroom. The poems referenced are ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ and ‘A Refusal To Morn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London’ by Dylan Thomas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to Series 10 of Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. Whilst on a tour of the country in my capacity as stand-up comedian, I did a gig in Swansea and actually stayed at the birthplace of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. I slept in Dylan's bedroom at 5 Cwmddonkin Drive in Swansea. And I was with my tour manager and my support act. And before we went to bed that night night I read some Dylan Thomas to them, not exactly against their will. It's hard to tell, they're in my pay, they only have so much

choice in these things. Anyway, I thought I might read these poems to you today, why should you get away with it? But obviously talk about them in a bit more detail. So I'm going to begin by reading you the first stanza of one of those poems that I read that night at Dylan Thomas's birthplace. Okay, so the poem is called And Death Shall Have No Dominion. It was written in 1933 when Dylan Thomas was, wait for it, 19 years of age. I know. What happened apparently was Bert Trick, who was a mate of Dylan Thomas's in Swansea, said, let's both write a poem about immortality

and we'll see who comes up with the best one. Do young people still say stuff like that? I don't know, but anyway, this is the first stanza. It's a shortish poem. It's three nine line stanzas. I'm gonna give you a bit more than I normally give and what I would do for the first reading if you're not familiar with Dylan Thomas is don't worry too much about what the hell I'm talking about just listen to it as if I

was playing a saxophone solo. Just enjoy the music. Okay. And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the West's moon when their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone. They shall have stars at elbow and foot. Though they go mad they shall be sane. Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again. Though lovers be lost, love shall not, and death shall have no dominion.' Okay, I absolutely love it. It's based apparently on a verse from the New Testament, Romans 6, 9, which says, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him. So no more power power no more dominance he's beaten perhaps the

biggest enemy of all death and as this is a poem which came from a challenge to write about immortality it's all about I suppose working out what kind of immortality Dylan Thomas is talking about. I find that critics generally are not very keen to give him a straightforward Christian belief even though his mother was a fervent chapel attender. His father who was a school teacher was a big-time atheist. So I guess it's like when you start a game of pool you can do spots or stripes that was Dylan's choice. Okay and death shall have no dominion, dead men naked they shall be one with

the man in the wind and the West moon. And there's lots of recordings of Dylan Thomas reading his own poems. He was a sort of pioneer of the poetry album and he leaves a very clear line break there. And dead shall have no dominion, dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the West Moon. So dead men naked they shall be one seems to suggest that in death we move away from the individual in some way to the universal and just while we're on it they shall be one with the man in the wind and the West Moon so they seem to also become cosmic suddenly in some way I'm going to quickly point out man in the wind and the West Moon you get M and W alliteration there reversed man in the wind and the West moon

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone such a great line That's those last three monosyllables clean bones gone So when their bones are picked clean so their flesh when that's gone and the clean bones gone, even that has gone, even the bones. They shall have stars at elbow and foot. So they don't have an elbow and foot physically anymore, but where they've gone and what they've become is bigger than the physical. And it's a fabulously balanced opening stanza of it seems like everything is lost, but everything isn't that.

If you just listen to these lines, though they go mad, they shall be sane. Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again. Though lovers be lost love shall not so it looks bad it's actually okay it looks bad it's actually okay and then repetition of that first line and death shall have no dominion now Dylan Thomas if you read criticism of him, it's always the same thing. And it is that with him it's mainly about music rather than meaning, and sometimes he's

just enjoying the word so much that he becomes basically indecipherable. And it's one of those cliches that is used a lot. Is it fair? I'm not sure it is. His writing method which he was upfront about, was he said he would conjure up either deliberately or accidentally some enticing phrase. Then he would see how it developed So he talked about writing from words Not towards them. So he didn't think I want to say this this was in his normal

Poetry writing method he didn't think I want to say this what word shall I use? He thought I really like this phrase, what can it become? And so the meaning comes a bit further down the line. I remember reading an interview with the artist Francis Bacon, in which he said sometimes he just did a big squiggle on the canvas and he thought,

oh, that looks a bit like a screaming version of Velázquez's Pope I'll make it that and it's a bit like that it starts off with an idea with something not formed with something that you feel in your gut and then you add your brain's response to it. So, what does he exactly mean about dead men naked, there shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon, when their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, they shall have stars at elbow and foot.

Does he mean that we will somehow become cosmic spiritual figures not tied to physicality anymore? Or is it a sort of a immortality as compost kind of an argument in that we become part of the universe, our particles. You must have heard people say, oh yeah, when you breathe in air, you'll breathe in air that Napoleon breathed in because there's that constant mix of cells and atoms. Maybe you haven't, maybe I just hang around with strange people.

I love that line by the way, though, lovers be lost, love shall not. And that gives the idea the physical presence of lovers. Okay, when they die, it's awful, but love shall not. So the love won't die, we still love people who are dead. And love continues as this abstract idea long after the people who took part in it are gone. Okay, I should say by the way as I as I say all this I'm looking at a large postcard which I bought in Swansea at the Dylan Thomas Centre and the caption is in neon

Love the words Which is based I think on a quote from Dylan Thomas in which he said and I quote my love for the real life of words increased And I quote, my love for the real life of words increased until I knew I must live with them and in them. I must be a writer of words and nothing else. So that is at some point, I guess in his childhood, he realised that it had to be words. That's what had to be his life. Okay, I'm gonna go into the second stanza. It gets trickier now. And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea, they lying long shall not die windily. Twisting on racks when sinews give way, strapped to a wheel yet they shall not break, Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through, Split all ends up they shan't crack, And death shall have no dominion. So what's going on now there seems to be, how could one describe it, death as a kind of torturer all these images of being on the rack have been strapped to a

wheel let's have a look at it and that shall have no dominion that line becomes the bookends for each of the stanzas, beginning and end, first and last line. And dead shall have no dominion, under the windings of the sea, they lying long shall not die windily. Now again, going to Dylan Thomas's readings, I originally thought this was windily, under the windings of the sea, they lying long shall not die windily.

And I had an image of their swirling bodies amidst the sea, but he definitely says windily, I wonder if he sees death as a torturer, as something which needs to be resisted, which tries to break you down but you shouldn't give in to. You should adopt a sort of obstinate refusal to cooperate with death, even as you die, as if you have to fight for the right to gain immortality. I suppose the classic example of this is a poem which you may well know called Do Not Do not go gentle into that good night. Which is in mainly three line stances. The first of which says, Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. If you don't know that poem it's almost certainly coming soon to a funeral near you. It's oft read at funerals because apparently Dylan Thomas wrote it when

his father was dying, I guess encouraging him to rant and rave against mortality. Okay, they lying long shall not die windily, twisting on racks when sinews give way, strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break. Faith in their hands shall snap in two, and the unicorn evils run them through.' All that torture-y stuff that's going on under the windings of the sea. Now the sea is very prevalent in Dylan Thomas's poetry. Obviously it's prevalent in poetry, it's used for all sorts of imagery. From Dylan Thomas's house at five, cum don king drive, forgive me by the way,

if you're Welsh and you're thinking, why are you saying it like that? It should be hum hum. You can see the sea from his house. So he grew up with that as a backdrop and it's a symbol for all sorts of things, but often death. And here under the windings of the sea they lying long shall not die Windily now lying long might mean that they're gonna be dead for a long time

It might be with all the racks and stuff that they are stretched in some way They lying long shall not die windily. I wonder if when we think about torch-out we always think, well, will they talk or will they not? And to do something windily for all its varied meanings can mean with a great deal of words. So maybe they shall not die windily suggests that they don't give in, they don't talk, they don't tell their truths, twisting on racks when sinews give way strapped to a wheel yet they shall not break. Again, that suggests physically break,

but also break as in give in or surrender. Remember, this is a guy almost certainly, this is a 1930s schoolboy who would have read those ripping yarns when the heroes don't give in to the torture and don't tell them the important things. Twisting on racks when sinews give way strapped to a wheel yet they shall not break. Faith in their hands shall snap in two and the unicorn evils run them through. So it gets worse and worse. Faith in their hands shall snap

in two. I don't know if it means that their faith will snap or if it means faith in their hands, in their physicality, in their strength shall snap in two. It's the moment when they abandon their previous dependence on physicality and sort of graduate to the spiritual, the cosmic, the immortal. These bodies can be broken but not their spirits. I'm going to say not their souls. So mortality, this torture of their physical bodies, is losing its hold on them.

They're shedding the physical, the mortal, and becoming immortal. And as they shed the physical, they also sort of shed their individuality and become universal. Dead men naked, they shall be one. And when it says naked, I think it means exposed, shattered, sort of on physical. Anyway, carry on. And the unicorn evils run them through. Unicorn makes me think of something imaginary. Unicorn evils, I guess, fears, terrors, all the terrors of the mind shall run them through.

So they're really getting there twisted they're strapped to a wheel their faith in their hands shall snap into and the unicorn evils run them through they're in a bad way split all ends up they shan't crack and for me the use of the word shant when it that is screaming out for a shall not suggests a ripping yarn suggests that sort of heroic resistance that one gets in pulp novels or in comic books of the time split all ends up, they shan't crack, and death shall have no dominion." So we seem to be human beings fighting death in some way. I said earlier that a lot of critics are not keen on seeing Dylan as a Christian, even though his mother was a good chapelgoer. But he certainly

has what you might call a preacher-like and almost prophet-like voice. The poems have a grandness and a big theme, many of them, this one certainly, which I think a lot of modern poets would be slightly wary of taking on in such a head-on manner. He said of his own religious interests, the great rhythms had rolled over me from the Welsh pulpits, and I read for myself from Job and Ecclesiastes and the story of the New Testament is part of my life.' So even if he didn't have a deep religious belief he was certainly very entranced by the words of it all, by the poetry. Now this is something I find very interesting there is a Welsh word it's spelled H Y W L and as I understand it it's called Hwyl and it means

literally the canvas of a ship or the the sail and as I said Dylan Thomas loves any kind of sea based metaphor and it would be used of preachers and the idea was that the spirit would fill the sails of that preacher and power him or her forward. It would have been him then, I guess. And if a preacher was in full flow, they'd be said to catch the hul. So they're really fired up. There's a bit in St. Paul, I don't know if the reference, but I just remember it, where he says, when you're questioned and taken to court and whatever, don't worry about what you say, that the spirit will speak

for you. And apparently one of the methods of this huil was repetition to repeat something over and over, and maybe that's what, and death shall have no dominion, that line he's doing here. But this I can imagine someone in a Welsh pulpit blasting out and death shall have no dominion. It has that feel to it. OK, here comes the last stanza. And death shall have no dominion no more may gulls cry at their ears or Waves bright loud on the seashores where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain Though they be mad and dead as nails heads of the characters hammer through daisies breaking the Sun till the sun breaks down and death shall have no dominion. Right, let's examine this. No more may gulls cry at their ears or waves break load on the seashore. So it sounds like these people, the dead, even though they're resisting this this torture, resisting, giving in to mortality completely, they have lost the joys, the simple joys of being alive. No more may gulls cry at their ears or

waves break lowed on the seashores, Where bluer flower may a flower no more lift its head to the blows of the rain. So just the simple beauties of the world have been taken from them. And then this odd ending, though they be mad and dead as nails heads of the characters hammer through daisies breaking the Sun till the Sun breaks down and death shall have no dominion so no more may gulls cry at their ears or waves break loud on the seashores where blew a flare so those that those two lines no more may gulls cry at their ears, or waves break loud on the seashores, where blew a flower.

So those two lines, no more may gulls cry at their ears, or waves break loud on the seashores. He's been using the sea as an image of death, and now he uses the sea and its surroundings as an image of life. Where blew a flower, may a flower no more lift its head to the blows of the rain. It's a strange use of blows there. You don't normally think about the blows of the rain. You imagine a flower lifting its head for nutrition from the rain.

And that word blows heralds a few words that suggest the hammering in of nails there's blows nails heads hammer in the poem about immortality it has to doesn't it conjure up the most famous example of relinquishing of the physical for the spiritual the mortal for the immortal. The crucifixion of Christ is what I'm talking about. Bang, bang, bang. It's almost like you can hear a hammering going on in the background of this. Lift its head to the blows of the rain, though they may be mad and dead as nails, heads of the characters

hammer through daisies. I can't read this without thinking of one of my favourite paintings which Dylan Thomas would almost certainly have been aware of. It was painted, it was finished I think in 1927. It was painted by Stanley Spencer and it's called Resurrection in Cookham. Stanley Spencer lived in a small English town called Cookham and he just painted what the resurrection would be like. People he knew and stuff climbing out of the grounds. There is a woman emerging from her grave through a great mound of daisies, wearing a dress covered in daisies. So when I read heads of the characters hammer through daisies, I always think of that painting.

I also know that in World War I, certainly and before, the phrase pushing up daisies meant death. I'm afraid he's pushing up daisies. And also, third daisy point, that in Old English daisies came from the phrase days I, which happened because because days is apparently open up slightly when the Sun comes out which is a great image I think of resurrection a flower that opens when when the Sun comes even though here the Sun is breaking down don't panic I'm gonna go back to this. No more may gulls cry at their ears or waves break loud on the seashore. So they've lost the physical joys. Where

blew a flower may a flower no more lift its head to the blows of the rain. Though they be mad and dead as nails. So at this moment they're mad and dead as nails. They've been battered by life and by death itself into almost nothingness. But now suddenly heads of the characters hammer through daisies. Doesn't that sound like resurrection? Doesn't that sound like people coming up through the ground. I don't want to be one of the boring guys who says this sounds like age 19 Dylan Thomas wrote a poem about immortality and used some sort of classic images of dying and then rising up again. Though they sink through the sea sea they shall rise again. But that's, it's, I can't get away from it and I don't want to go into what the critics

are telling me and ignore what my God is telling me. I think here we're talking about though they may be mad and dead as nails so they died screaming and fighting death and somehow continued to fight it in the guise of this torturer who ripped them apart I suppose as they are physically dismantled by death into atoms. But now heads of the characters hammer through daisies breaking the sun till the sun breaks down.

That sounds like the end of the world, doesn't it? The sun breaks down. So it sounds like, yeah, the judgment day, and here they come. And death shall have no dominion. So I think, and death shall have no dominion, is saying that we shouldn't give in to death and we should rise again.

And I think it's possible that it's talking about compost. The heads of the characters hammer through daisies. I think it might mean that we are physically dispersed, so that we shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon and we'll have stars at elbow and foot. It could just mean there is a physical resurrection of our bodily components after we are broken down by the great torturer. Split all ends up

as he puts it. And maybe when we hammer through the dazes we are in some way I don't know chlorophyll so it could be as as as down to earth no pun intended as that or it could have richer more spiritual more cosmic suggestions or of course it's a poem it could have both but I tell you what's good about it is I like reading it and it makes me feel like I'm in a pulpit I'm gonna just do that first stanza again quickish as if I was in a pulpit and death shall have no Dominion, dead men naked, they shall be one with the man in the wind and the West's moon when their bones are

picked clean and the clean bones gone. They shall have stars at elbow and foot, though they go mad, they shall be sane, though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again, though lovers be lost, love shall not, and death shall have no dominion." Oh, honestly, it's like a workout. Interior Chinatown is an all-new series based on the bestselling novel by Charles Yu about a struggling Asian actor who gets a bigger part than he expected when he witnesses a crime in Chinatown. Streaming November 19th only on Disney Plus. What do Ontario dairy farmers bring to the table?

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and save 10% on your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com. The other poem that I wanna talk about is has got quite a shocking title. It is a refusal to mourn the death by fire of a child in London. It's such a great poem this. Dylan Thomas was a bit of a war poet,

but an unusual war poet in that he didn't go to war. But of course in World War II, you didn't need to go to war because war came to you. And he wrote a few poems about air raids, a man dying aged 100 in an air raid etc. And this is one of them. This begins this a refusal to mourn the death by fire of a child in London published in 1946 but written in 1945 begins with a really long sentence and again I don't expect you to get this first time but I'm gonna blast it out. There's such a joy if ever you get interested in Dylan Thomas just try reading him out loud.

He's great at reading him out loud and I mean even though he doesn't hold back from the melodrama and the woo, which I've condemned previously in these podcasts, but it kind of works with this stuff because, yes, it is about love the words, but also Dylan's themes are often so grand, so, and I know I keep saying it cosmic, they suit a slightly apocalyptic style. Anyway, the first sentence of a refusal to mourn, as I'm going to call it for sure,

covers two stanzas and one line. I'm going to take a breath and we're going to go for it. Never until the mankind-making bird-beast and flower-fathering and all-humbling darkness tells with silence the last light breaking and the still hour is calm of the sea tumbling in harness, and I must enter again the round Zion of the water-be bead and the synagogue of the ear of corn shall I let pray the shadow of a sound or sow my salt seed in the least valley of sackcloth to mourn the majesty and burning of the child's death. Whoa! And relax. Okay, never until. So something I'm not going to do until the mankind making bird, beast and flower fathering

and all humbling darkness. So I think he's talking about God or some kind of God. He's calling it a darkness I think he's talking about God or some kind of God. He's calling it a darkness, I think, because we cannot understand it. It is incomprehensible. And it's a nice switch, God often associated with light. But here God is the mankind-making, bird, beast and flower-fathering and all-humbling darkness I mean if anyone asks you to define God learn that off by heart I'm gonna do it again for joy never until the mankind making bird beast and flower fathering and all

humbling darkness bird beast and flower fathering I mean-humbling darkness. Bird, beast and flower fathering. I mean again the alliteration there but it's so good it's so beautiful. So in Ever Until the Man-Kind-Making, bird, beast and flower fathering and all-humbling darkness tells with silence. Again it's this strange mysterious God who tells with silence. How do you do that? The last light breaking and the still hour is come of the sea tumbling in harness. So when everything is stopped, when even the wild rampaging sea stilled and held as if in a harness at the end of the world and the still hour everything has stopped is come of the

sea tumbling in harness. Now there's a very famous in inverted commas Dylan Thomas poem called Fern Hill, which you'll know the first line maybe, now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs. But it ends Fern Hill with something that reminds me of this line with the sea tumbling in a harness. A harness is not something you normally imagine on the sea but Fernhill ends, time held me green and dying though I sang in my chains

like the sea. So in this poem and in a few of Dylan Thomas's poem, life and death are so entwined that time held me green and dying. Green you associate with new life, with youth, with immaturity, but dying at the same time though I sang in my chains like the sea. In what way is the sea in chains? Well, I think it is in chains to the tide, to the cycle of the tide. Although it sings, it makes a fantastic noise, it is beautiful. It is chained to that, just as mankind is chained to the rhythms of life and death. It's like a tidal cycle of inevitability. So to mourn ecstatically about the death of one child by fire in World War II is to ignore that cycle, to ignore what is humanity, to ignore who we are. It's a brave statement to make

and you wouldn't want to be doing it at the child's funeral. But this is his point. I think, never until the mankind making, bird, beast and flower fathering and all humbling darkness tells with silence the last light breaking and the still hour is come of the sea tumbling in harness so when everything is stopped at the end of the world that's it into the next stanza and I must enter again the round Zion of the water bead and the synagogue of the ear of corn. Now that just sounds doesn't it like words that sound good but I think what he's saying is I must enter again the round so I must go again it's I think it's the fabulous cosmic compost future of humanity that this can be seen as.

I must enter again the round Zion of the water bead and the synagogue of the ear of corn. So I've got to go back to the very basics of nature in the water bead and the ear of corn, but also he's given that a deep ancient religiosity in that it is the Zion of the water bead and the synagogue of the ear of corn So in one way this end is very physical, but in other way It's very Old Testament very spiritual very religious very poetic Anyway, remember that never until the mankind, man can birdbeast and flower fathering and all humbling darkness tells with silence the last light breaking and the still hour has come of the sea tomming your eyes and I must enter again the round zone of the water bed and the synagogue of the year of corn shall I let pray

Let pray the shadow of a sound or sow my salt seed in the least valley of sackcloth to mourn the majesty and burning of the child's death. So not until the end of the world shall I let pray the shadow of a sound, the slightest, tiniest sound, or sow my salt seed, so I'm not going to cry either, I'm not going to sow my salt seed, release my salty tears, in the least valley of sackcloth? In the Bible there's a lot, especially the Old Testament, In the Bible there's a lot, especially the Old Testament, maybe exclusive to the Old Testament. That is how people mourn. That is how people do penance in sackcloth and ashes. So he's saying, never, and then that big clause, but basically to the end of the world, shall I let pray the shadow of a soul, not the slightest grunt, no sound of crying or sow my salt seed, there'll be no tears, in the least valley of sackcloth to mourn. To put on sackcloth was to publicly mourn, and he's fighting there.

One thing I love about this poem is it seems to be saying I hate those hollow elegies that are said when someone dies and we all we all know our thoughts are with his family that kind of stuff that's just tripped off the tongue and doesn't seem to have any real pain or emotion in it sort of thing that's said on the news or on X, open brackets, formerly Twitter, close brackets. So he's not gonna mourn in any way until the end of the world, the majesty and burning of the child's death.

Now, what on earth can that mean? The majesty and burning of the child's death? It's something it seems to me, not saying it was a spectacular death to go by fire, it seems to be saying the majesty of it is because it's so part of what humanity is about. He goes on, I shall not murder the mankind of her going with a grave truth. So it's so natural, it's so right, it is so what being a human being is to die even as a child I shall not murder the mankind of her going I will not deny her essential humanity which is about life and death

Often mixed closely together as it said in Fern Hill, time held me green and dying. So I shall not murder the mankind of her going with a grave truth. Now grave obviously means serious but a grave is a man-made response to death and I think when he says a grave truth, he means those epitaphs, those eulogies. Grave truths. So literally, words spoken at the grave site or words chosen for the headstone, any verbal or written tribute to the dead, as the speaker sees it, I think, runs the risk of becoming a hollow recital of clichés and sentimentality. I'm not playing that game. I'm not even gonna... There won't be a shadow of a sound or any salt seed or no sackcloth from me.

I shall not murder the mankind of her going with a grave truth, nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath with any further elegy of innocence and youth." So he won't blaspheme down the stations of the breath. Now I'm a Roman Catholic and I'm very familiar with the stations of the cross which go around the wall of every Catholic church, but it's true in many Christian religions that the stations of the cross are observed, including the Methodist religion which Dylan Thomas would have been very familiar with. And what it is is 14 pictures, certainly in the Catholic Church they're pictures or sculptures or whatever, of the stages of Jesus being arrested and

then tried and then having to carry the cross and then being crucified, dying and being buried. There are 14 stations of the cross, and they follow that narrative. They follow the trajectory from arrest to burial. Some of the modern ones cheat a bit, and they add a 15th station of the cross which is a resurrection. It's a classic modern tendency to soften things up a bit. There is no resurrection in the stations of the cross. It ends with burial and I think that is why Dylan Thomas speaks of the stations of the breath. That is the order of things.

That is the sequence. We live and then we die and that is how it goes. Now there are suggestions and there will be in this poem that things go on in some way even only as compost but death and life are absolutely entwined for Dylan. Okay let's end the refusal to mourn. So he will not blaspheme down the stations of the breath with any further elegy of innocence and youth. So these are not the stations of the cross they are the stations of the breath with any further elegy of innocence and youth. So these are not the stations of the cross, they are the stations of the breath, the stations of life. But just as sacred to him,

just as much a strong cyclical narrative that has an inevitability and an order and a rightness about it. And he won't blaspheme them down with any further elegy of innocence and youth. I think saying that innocence and youth are held up as a reason to not die, but they don't work in Dylan's order of things.

And indeed in nature's, it's never saved anyone yet. Last stanza. Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter, robed in the long friends, the grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother. So she's now gone, she's in the earth. Deep with the first dead. So her ancestors, people who,

the first human beings to die, London's daughter, that's who she is. She is a child of London. And so she lies robed in the long friends. Now I've seen this analyzed as the long friends being worms, that she's robed in friends being eaten. I don't like it. The poem seems, you know, fresh and like a direct response to this death. It doesn't feel like she's had time to be worm eaten. I wonder if the long friends might be friends that have, she may never know, but they are part of humanity, part from way back in history.

So they are long friends in that they are part of that human family. Long, long before she was born, but now they are united, the grains beyond age, I don't know if that means dust, maybe it does, the dark veins of her mother. So there's a sense of continuity and it's just like in and death shall have no dominion, when dead men naked they shall be one says the line and now it seems she also has moved from individuality to universality and has become part of this human family in the local way at part of London's dead family. The grains beyond there is the dark veins of her mother. Here's the last three lines. Secret by the unmorning water of the riding Thames.

So secret, she's hidden in the earth, maybe lost in the fire, maybe she was destroyed in the fire and she is just grains now, just the dark veins of her mother. She has become of the earth, pushing through the daisies like those characters in and death shall have no dominion. And this is what I'm trying to get across. There's a sense that this is a spiritual and cosmic experience, this fighting against death, this grasping of immortality, and it feels religious. But on another level, it could just be that she's been burned to dust and that dust joins the dust of many many dead of London and

just of the earth and she's becoming at one with them secret by the unmorning water of the riding Thames. There was a popular song a woman woman called Gracie Fields, who was a big star in her day, she did it in the late 30s. I'm sure Dylan Thomas would know it. And it was about the Thames and it sort of echoes, or this echoes, the indifference of the Thames in that song. So a popular song may be informed this stanza. One of the verses of the song says, what does he know? What does he care? Nothing for you or me. Old father Thames keeps rolling along

down to the mighty sea and it's an image that you see, I mean it's also in Old Man River, the idea of rivers just keep going, they don't care about us, they are aware of the rhythms of life, the inevitability of moving on constant motion and of moving on constant motion and us dying on its banks and lying secret by the unmorning water of the riding Thames. We are not that important to the river because the river knows in a way that we don't that this is what life and death is about. The last line is incredibly enigmatic. And if you want to decide whether Dylan Thomas has a religious belief in resurrection or whether he just thinks we make great fertilizer,

this line won't help. Because a refusal to mourn the death by fire of a child in London by Dylan Thomas ends after the first death there is no other. What does that mean after the first death there is no other so we live forever or after the first death there is no other because we're just dead and that's it. I don't know the answer to that. I think they're remarkable poems. I love reading them out loud. I hope I've helped you to understand them somewhat. But I think this is an occasion where, yeah, the meaning is always important to me but sometimes you just have to embrace the joy of it and get a sense of that meaning get a sense get a feel for what's oh, read Dylan Thomas, it's top stuff.

Thank you for listening to Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast. Don't forget to follow so you never miss an episode. See you next week.