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Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
----And the mussel pooled and the heron
------------Priested shore
---------The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
---------Myself to set foot
------------That second
----In the still sleeping town and set forth.

----My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
----Above the farms and the white horses
------------And I rose
---------In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
---------Over the border
------------And the gates
----Of the town closed as the town awoke.

----A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
----Blackbirds and the sun of October
------------Summery
---------On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
---------To the rain wringing
------------Wind blow cold
----In the wood faraway under me.

----Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
----With its horns through mist and the castle
------------Brown as owls
---------But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
---------There could I marvel
------------My birthday
----Away but the weather turned around.

----It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
----Streamed again a wonder of summer
------------With apples
---------Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
---------Through the parables
------------Of sun light
----And the legends of the green chapels

----And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
----These were the woods the river and sea
------------Where a boy
---------In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
---------And the mystery
------------Sang alive
----Still in the water and singingbirds.

----And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
----Joy of the long dead child sang burning
------------In the sun.
---------It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
---------O may my heart’s truth
------------Still be sung
----On this high hill in a year’s turning.

-Dylan Thomas, 1945