Paper and sticks and shovel and match
Why won’t the news of the old world catch
And the fire in a temper start
Once I had a rich boy for myself
I loved his body and his navy blue wealth
And I lived in his purse and his heart
When in our bed I was tossing and turning
All I could see were his brown eyes burning
By the green of a one pound note
I talk to him as I clean the grate
O my dear it’s never too late
To take me away as you whispered and wrote
I had a handsome and well-off boy
I’ll share my money and we’ll run for joy
With a bouncing and silver spooned kid
Sharp and shrill my silly tongue scratches
Words on the air as the fire catches
You never did and he never did.
by Dylan Thomas
Fun fact: This was the only poem left out of Dylan Thomas’ ‘Collected Poems 1934 – 1952‘ because he disliked it. The book was published on 10 November 1952 by Dylan’s usual publishers Dent of London, which gathered together all the poems from his three previous volumes of poetry (’18 Poems’, ‘Twenty Five Poems’ and ‘Deaths and Entrances’), plus a further six written since 1946, to make a total of 90.