Under Milk Wood, Part 1

To begin at the beginning

It is spring moonless night in the small town

Starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent

And the hunched cottars and rabbits wood

Limping invisible down to the slow-black, slow-black

Crow-black, fishing-boat-bubbling sea

The houses are blind as moles, (though moles see fine tonight)

In the snouting velvet dingles

Or blind as Captain Cat, there in the muffled middle

By the pump and the town clock

The shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weals

And all the people of the lulled and dumb-found town

Are sleeping now

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers

The tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher

Postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman

Drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman

The webfoot cottlewomen and the tidy wives

Young girls lie bedded soft, or glide in their dreams

With rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glowworms

Down the aisles of the organ-play wood

The boys are dreaming wicked, or of the bucking ranchers of the night

And the jolly-rogered sea

And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields

And the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards

And the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly streaking

And needling on the wan cloud of the roofs

You can hear the dew falling and the hushed town breathing

Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town

Fast and slow asleep

And you alone can hear the invisible

Star-fall, the darkest before dawn

Minutely dewgrazed stir of the black dab-filled sea

Where the Arethusa, the curlew, and the skylark

Phoebe and Sally and Mary Ann

Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant

And the Star of Wales tilt and ride

Listen! It is night moving in the streets

The processional salt-slow-musical wind

In Coronation Street and Cottle Row

It is the grass growing on Tereghub Hill

Dewfall, star-fall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood

Listen! It is night in the chill squat chapel hymning

In bonnet and brooch and bombazine black

Butterfly choker and bootlace bow

Coughing like nannygoats sucking mintos

Fortywinking hallelujah

Night in the four-ale bar, quiet as a domino

In Ocky Milkman's loft like a mouse with gloves

In Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour

Listen! It is tonight in Donkey Street trotting silent

With seaweed on its hooves

Along the cockled cobbles past curtain, fernpot, text and trinket

Harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand

China dog and rosy tin tea-caddy

It is night neddyin' among the snuggeries of babies

Look! It is night dumbly, royally

Winding through the Coronation cherry trees

Going through the graveyard of Bethesda

With winds gloved and folded and dewdoft

Tumbling by the Sailors Arms

Time passes. Listen. Time passes

Come closer now

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets

In the slow deep salt and silent black-banded night

Only you can see in the blinded bedrooms

The combs and petticoats over the chairs

The jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth

Thou-shalt-nots on the wall

And the yellowing dickeybird-watching pictures of the dead

Only you can hear and see behind the eyes of the sleepers

The movements and countries and mazes and colours

And dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes

And flight and fall and despairs

And big seas of their dreams

From where you are you can hear their dreams

Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain

Asleep in his bunk in the seashelled

Ship-in-bottled, shipshape, best cabin of Schooner House

Dreams of never such seas as any that

Swamped the decks of his S.S. Kidwelly

Bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish slippery sucking him down

Salt-deep into the Davy dark

Where the fish come biting out from behind

The wet green wallpaper of the undersea

And he dreams ofand nibbled him down to his wishbone

And a long drowned nuzzled up to him

Remember me, Captain?

You're Donting Williams

I lost my step in Nantucket

You see me, Captain?

The white bone talking

I'm Tom Fred the donkey-man

We shared the same girl once

Her name was Mrs Probert

Rosie Probert

33 Duck Lane

Come on up, boys

I'm dead

Hold me, Captain

I'm Jonah Jarvis come to a bad end

Very enjoyable

Alfred Pomeroy Jones, sea-lawyer

Born in Mumbles

Sung like a linnet

Crowned you with a flagon

Tattooed with mermaids

Thirst like a dredger

Died of blisters

This skull at your earhole is

Curly Besom

Tell my auntie it was me that pawned the ormeril clock

Aye, aye, Curly

Tell my missus, no I never

I never done what she said, I never

Yes they did

And who brings coconuts and shawls and parrots

To my Gwen now?

How's it above?

Is there rum and laverbread?

Pussums and robins?

Concertinas?

Ebenezers bend?

Whiting and onions?

And sparrows and daisies?

Jigglers in a jamjar?

Buttermilk and whippets?

Rockabye baby?

Washing on the line?

And old girls in the snack?

How's the tenors at Douwe's?

Who milks the cows in Maesgwynn?

When she smiles, is there dimples?

What's the smell of parsley?

Oh, my dead dears

From where you are you can hear in Cockle Row

In the spring moonless night

Miss Price, dressmaker and sweetshop keeper

Dream of

Her lover, tall as the town clocktower

Samsonsyrup goldmaned

Whacking-thighed and piping-hot

Thunderbolt-bassed and barnacle-breasted

Flailing up the cockles with his eyes like glowlamps

And stooping low over her lonely loving hotwaterbottle body

Myfanwy Price

Mr Mog Edwards

I am a draper mad with love

I love you more than all the flannelette and calico

Candlewick, dimity, creche and merino

Tussar, cretonne, creponne, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill

In the whole cloth hall of the world

I have come to take you away to my emporium on the hill

Where the change hums on wires

Throw away your little bedsock and your Welsh-wool knitted jacket

I will warm the sheets like an electric toaster

I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast

I will knit you a wallet of forget-me-not blue

For the money to be counted

I will warm your heart with a fire

So that you can slip it in under your vest

When the shop is closed

Mafanwy, Mafanwy

Before the mice gnaw at your bottom drawer

Will you say

Yes, Mog

Yes, Mog

Yes, yes, yes

And all the bells of the tills of the town

Shall ring for our wedding

Come now, drift up the dark

Come up the drifting sea-dark street now

In the dark night

See-sawing like the sea

To the bible-black airless attic

Of a Jack Black, the cobbler's shop

Where alone and savagely

Jack Black sleeps in a nightshirt

Tied to his ankles with elastic

And dreams of

Chasing the naughty couples

Down the grass-green gooseberry double bed of the wood

Flogging the tosspots in the spit and sawdust

Driving out the bare bold girls from

The sixpenny hops of his nightmare

Ach avee, ach avee

And in the little pink-eyed cottage next to the cobbler's

Lie alone the seventeen snoring gentle stone

Of Mr Waldo

Rabbitcatcher, barber, herbalist, catdoctor, quack

His fat pink hands palms up over the edge of the patchwork quilt

His black boot neat and tidy in the washing basin

His bowler on a nail above the bed

A milk stout and a slice of cold bread pudding under the pillow

And, dripping in the dark, he dreams of

This little piggy went to market

This little piggy stayed at home

This little piggy had roast beef

And this little piggy had none

And this little piggy went

Wee, wee, wee, wee, wee

All the way home to

Waldo, Waldo

Yes, Blodwen love

Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours

Poor Mrs Waldo

What she puts up with

Never should have married

She didn't have to

Same as her mother

There's a husband for you

Bad as his father

And you know where he ended

Up in the asylum

Crying for his ma

Every Saturday

He hasn't got a land

Carrying on

With that Mrs Beatty-Morris

Up in the quarry

And seen her baby

It's got his nose

It makes my heart bleed

What he'll do for drink

He sold the piano

And her sewing machine

Bawling in the gutter

Talking to the lamppost

Using language

Singing in the W

Poor Mrs Waldo

Oh, Waldo, Waldo

Hush, love, hush

I'm widower Waldo now

Waldo, Waldo

Yes, our mum

Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours

Black as a chimbley

Ringing doorbells

Breaking windows

Making mudpies

Stealing currants

Chalking words

Saw him in the bush at play in bookends

Send him to bed without any supper

Give him sennapods and lock him in the dock

Off to the reformatory

Off to the reformatory

Burn him with a slipper on his B.T.M

Waldo, Waldo

What are you doing with our Matty?

Give us a kiss, Matty Richards

Give us a penny then

I only got a halfpenny

Lips

Will you take this woman, Matty Richards

Delsie Prothero

Effie Bevan

Lil the Gluepot

Mrs. Platter

Blodwyn Bowen

To be your awful wedded wife?

Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline nightgown

Under virtuous polar sheets

In her spruced and scarred, dust-defying bedroom

In trig and trim Bay View

A house for paying guests

At the top of the town

Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard

Widow (twice)

Of Mr. Ogmore, linoleum retired

And Mr. Pritchard, failed bookmaker

Who, maddened by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing

The voice of the vacuum cleaner

And the fume of polish

Ironically swallow disinfectant

Fidgets in her rinsed sleep

Wakes in a dream

And nudges in the ribs

Dead Mr. Ogmore

Dead Mr. Pritchard

Ghostly on either side

Mr. Ogmore, Mr. Pritchard, it is time to inhale your balsam

Oh, Mrs. Ogmore

Oh, Mrs. Pritchard

Soon it will be time to get up. Tell me your tasks in order

I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked Pyjamas

I must take my cold bath, which is good for me

I must wear my flannel band to ward off sciatica

I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron

I must blow my nose

In the garden, if you please

In a piece of tissue paper which I afterwards burn

I must take my salts, which are nature's friend

I must boil the drinking water because of germs

I must make my herb tea, which is free from tannin

And have a charcoal biscuit, which is good for me

I may smoke one pipe of asthma mixture

In the woodshed, if you please

And dust the parlour and spray the canary

I must put on rubber gloves and search the peat for fleas

I must dust the blinds and then I must raise them

And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes

In Butcher Beynon's

Gossamer Beynon, daughter, schoolteacher

Dreaming deep

Daintily ferrets under a fluttering hammock of chickens' feathers

In a slaughterhouse that has chintz curtains and a three-piece suite

And finds with no surprise

A small, rough, ready man with a bushy tail

Winking in a paper carrier

Help!

Cries Organ Morgan, the organist, in his dream

There is perturbation and music in Coronation Street

All the spouses are honking like geese

And the babies singing opera

Police Constable Attila Evans

Has got his truncheon out

And is playing cadenzas by the pump

The cows from Sunday Meadow ring like reindeer

And on the roof of Handel Villa

See the Women's Welfare

Hoofing Bloomer in the moon

At last, my love

Sighs Gossamer Beynon

And the bushy tail wags, rude and ginger

At the sea end of town

Mr. and Mrs. Curly Floyd, the cocklers

Are sleeping as quiet as death

Side by wrinkled side

Toothless, salt and brown

Like two old kippers in a box

And high above in Salt Lake Farm

Mr. Jutta Watkins counts all night

The white-faced sheep

As they leap the fences on the hill

Smiling and knitting and bleating

Just like Mrs. Jutta Watkins

Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, forty-eight, eighty-nine

Knit one, slip one, knit two together, pass the slip stitch over

Ocky Milkman, drowned asleep in Cockle Street

Is emptying his churns into the dewy river

Regardless of expense

And weeping like a funeral

Cherry Owen next door lifts a tankard to his lips

But nothing flows out of it

He shakes the tankard

It turns into a fish

He drinks the fish

Willy Nilly, postman, asleep up street

Walks fourteen miles and delivers the post

In his dream

As he does every night

Sinbad Sailors hugs his pillow called Gossamer Beynon

A mogul catches Lily Smalls in the washhouse

Oh, you old mogul!

Mrs. Rose Cottage's eldest maid

Is dreaming of tall, tower, quiet, furnace

Cave, flower, ferret, waterfall, sigh

Without any words at all

Alone until she dies

Bessie Bighead, hired help

Born in the workhouse

Smelling of the cowshed

Snores bass-baritone in Jutta Watkins' attic

And picks a posy of daisies in Sunday Meadow

To put on the grave of Gomer Owen

Who kissed her once by the pigsty when she wasn't looking

And never kissed her again

Although she was looking all the time

And the Inspectors of Cruelty

Fly down into Mrs. Butcher Beynon's dream

To persecute Mr. Beynon

For selling

Owl meat, dogs' eyes, man-chop

Help!

My foxy darling

Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets

Rocked to sleep by the sea

See the

Titbits and topsyturvies

Bobs and button-tops

Bags and bones

Ash and rind and dandruff and nail pareings

Saliva and snowflakes and moulted feathers of grebes

The wrecks and sprats and shells and fishbones

Whale juice and moonshine

And small salt fry

Dished up by the hidden sea

The owls are hunting

Look!

Over Bethesda gravestones

One hoots and swoops and catches a mouse

By Hannah Rees, beloved wife

And in Coronation Street

Which you alone can see

It is so dark

Under the chapel in the skies

Mr. Ely Jenkins, poet, preacher

Mrs. Organ Morgan, groceress

Butcher Beynon, Mr. Pugh, schoolteacher

And Mary Ann Sailors

Turn in their deep

Towards-dawn sleep

And dream of

Silence

Eis der Vorbei

Fishing for puffins

Murder

The river of John

In Donkey Street

So furred with sleep

Dai Bread, Polly Garter, No-Good Boyle

And Lord Cut-Glass

Sigh before the dawn that is about to be

And dream of

Parrots

Babies

Nothing

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock