photo: ralph murre
Sound Catcher
by Karen Stromberg
After 39 years this is all I’ve done.
Dylan Thomas’ final words.
Dylan, Welsh god of the sea, what have you done
but drown yourself in sound and longing,
stroking the arched backs of words, seeking the ones
that curl together like cats on the tongue,
the ones that electrify the dark, that spark
the spongy dryness of the mind. But all your meanings
within meaning cannot disguise the fact
you did not rage against the pain. You slid
down the narrow neck of anything you found,
glass and flesh alike, and you drowned, you
who knew why water throws itself against the shore,
spurred your own demise, taking your sweet syrup
of sound, half-hidden on that agile tongue
upon which all your honey’d words were hung.
~ first
published in qarrtsiluni
