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.
On No Work of Words, Dylan Thomas
This is the best poem to read when suffering from writer's block. The quiet, and yet quietly raging anger seething and bubbling to the surface, the helplessness and powerlessness you can feel from not able to find the right words, the torture that it is to be unable to express what you are thinking, or unable to grasp exactly what it is that you are thinking about expressing... haven't we all been there before?
Haven't done a poetry post in a while, and this is a great one to induct into my bank of poetry. I've always loved Dylan Thomas. He has such a fluid style, like grains of sand through an hourglass, despite the breaking of syntax over lines. His poems always make me think of water for some reason, rushing gently, but always with great speed, over rocky rivers and creeks.
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