On No Work of Words by Dylan Thomas

On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody

Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body

I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:

 

To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given

Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,

The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.

 

To lift to leave from treasures of man is pleasing death

That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath

And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.

 

To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.

Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas

If I take to burn or return this world which is each man’s work.

 

by Dylan Thomas

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Storm Awst by Gillian Clarke

The cat walks. It listens, as I do,

To the wind which leans its iron

Shoulders on our door. Neither

The purr of a cat nor my blood

Runs smoothly for elemental fear

Of the storm. This then is the big weather

They said was coming. All the signs

Were bad, the gulls coming in white,

Lapwings gathering, the sheep too

Calling all night. The gypsies

Were making their fires in the woods

Down there in the east…always

A warning. The rain stings, the whips

Of the laburnum hedge lash the roof

Of the cringing cottage. A curious

Calm, coming from the storm, unites

Us, as we wonder if the work

We have done will stand. Will the tyddyn,

In its group of strong trees on the high

Hill, hold against the storm Awst

Running across the hills where everything

Alive listens, pacing its house, heart still?

 

by Gillian Clarke

from The Sundial, (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)

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Fun facts:  Glossary: Welsh = English

Awst = August

Storm Awst = August storm

tyddyn = [farm] smallholding