Go, swallow, and tell, now that the summer is dying,
Spirits who loved him in time, where in the earth he is laid.
Dumb secrets are here, hard as the elm-roots in winter;
We who are left here confront words of inscrutable calm.
Life cuts into stone this that on earth is remembered,
How for the needs of the dead loving provision was made.
Strong words remain true, under the hammer of Babel:
Sleeps in the heart of the rock all that a god would restore.
Never shall time be stilled in the quarry of Cwmrhydyceirw,
Not while the boulder recoils under the force of the fuse.
Tablets imprisoned by rock, inert in the sleeping arena,
Quake in the shudder of air, knowing the swallow has passed.
One grief is enough, one tongue, to transfigure the ages:
Let our tears for the dead earn the forgiveness of dust.
NOTE: In a letter to Poetry just a few months before his death (see Contributors)
the poet told us that the Welsh name in the title is pronounced Coomrheeder-
cyroo. “It means ‘Valley of the Giants’, and in this quarry I found the memorial
stone for Dylan Thomas, presented by Caedmon, which is in Cwmdonkin
Park in Swansea.”
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