This Bread I Break

Multiple things are swallowing up all my time. Also our internet connection has been cut off - something to do with a controversial matter also known as "not paying bills". Oh well.

I have had time to read some Dylan Thomas though. Also latterly some Yeats. In both cases, when they're good, they sound great. Unfortunately, when they're impenetrable, I feel a headache coming on. Anyway:

This bread I break was once the oat,
The wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day, or wind by night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

Dylan Thomas, 1933.

Thomas is a fascinating character and a great poet, but unfortunately I find I can only seldom enjoy reading his poetry, and then only because I've given myself plenty of time to work up to it - unlike Auden, who I felt more able to dip in and out of.

Regardless, another that I think I should like to return to.