|
|
|
In the church that morning he spoke of the beauty of the harvest, of the promise of the standing corn and the promise of the sharp edge of the scythe as it brings the corn low and whistles through the air before it cuts into the ripeness.
Dylan Thomas, 'The Burning Baby,' from Adventures in the Skin Trade, New Directions, 1964, p. 84.
TIME: 19th or 20th C.?
PLACE: Wales
CIRCUMSTANCE: a clergyman
In the eaves of the lunatic asylum were birds who whistled in the coming of spring. A madman, howling like a dog from the top room, could not disturb them, and their tunes did not stop when he thrust his hands through the bars of the window near their nests and clawed at the sky.... In the gardens the patients sat and looked up at the sun or upon the flowers or upon nothing, or walked sedately along the paths, hearing the gravel crunch beneath their feet with a hard, sensible sound. Children in print dresses might be expected to play, not noisily, upon the lawn.
Dylan Thomas, 'The Mouse and the Woman,' from Adventures in the Skin Trade, New Directions, 1964, p. 97.
TIME: 19th or 20th C.?
PLACE: Wales
CIRCUMSTANCE: a lunatic asylum
For the first time he heard the clock. He had been deaf until then to everything but the wind outside the window and the clean winter sounds of the nightworld. But now the steady tick tock tick sounded like the heart of someone hidden in his room. He could not hear the night birds now. The loud clock drowned their crying, or the wind was too cold for them and made commotion among their feathers ... He tried not to think of the woman as he ate... In the clean glittering of the kitchen, among the white boards, the oleographs of old women, the brass candlesticks, the plates on the shelves, and the sounds of kettle and clock, he was caught between believing in her and denying her.
Dylan Thomas, 'The Mouse and the Woman,' from Adventures in the Skin Trade, New Directions, 1964, p. 98-99.
TIME: 19th or 20th C.?
PLACE: Wales
CIRCUMSTANCE: a madman thinks of a long-lost woman
home
