- Dylan Thomas / Under Milk Wood

"

[Silence]

 FIRST VOICE (Very softly)

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night
in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat
there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are
sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers,
the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher,
postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman,
drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot
cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft
or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux,
bridesmaided by glowworms down the aisles of the
organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the
bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea. And
the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields,
and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed
yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly,
streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded
town fast, and slow, asleep. And you alone can hear the
invisible starfall, the darkest-beforedawn minutely dewgrazed
stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the
Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover,
the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional
salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row,
it is the grass growing on Llaregyb Hill, dewfall, starfall,
the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.

Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in
bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and
bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes,
fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a
domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves;
in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night
in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its
hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot,
text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours
done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night
neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the
Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of
Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed;
tumbling by the Sailors Arms.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

Come closer now.

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the
slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you
can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms. and petticoats
over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth,
Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching
pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the
eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes
and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes
and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.

From where you are, you can hear their dreams.

Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain, asleep in his
bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best
cabin of Schooner House dreams of

 SECOND VOICE

never such seas as any that swamped the decks of his S.S.
Kidwelly bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery
sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark where the fish
come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and
the long drowned nuzzle up to him.

 FIRST DROWNED

Remember me, Captain?

 CAPTAIN CAT

You're Dancing Williams!

 FIRST DROWNED

I lost my step in Nantucket.

 SECOND DROWNED

Do you see me, Captain? the white bone talking? I'm Tom-Fred
the donkeyman...we shared the same girl once...her name was
Mrs Probert...

 WOMAN'S VOICE

Rosie Probert, thirty three Duck Lane. Come on up, boys,
I'm dead.

 THIRD DROWNED

Hold me, Captain, I'm Jonah Jarvis, come to a bad end, very
enjoyable.

 FOURTH DROWNED

Alfred Pomeroy Jones, sea-lawyer, born in Mumbles, sung
like a linnet, crowned you with a flagon, tattooed with
mermaids, thirst like a dredger, died of blisters.

 FIRST DROWNED

This skull at your earhole is

 FIFTH DROWNED

Curly Bevan. Tell my auntie it was me that pawned the ormolu
clock.

 CAPTAIN CAT

Aye, aye, Curly.

 SECOND DROWNED

Tell my missus no I never

 THIRD DROWNED

I never done what she said I never.

 FOURTH DROWNED

Yes they did.

 FIFTH DROWNED

And who brings coconuts and shawls and parrots to my
Gwen now?

 FIRST DROWNED

How's it above?

 SECOND DROWNED

Is there rum and laverbread?

 THIRD DROWNED

Bosoms and robins?

 FOURTH DROWNED

Concertinas?

 FIFTH DROWNED

Ebenezer's bell?

 FIRST DROWNED

Fighting and onions?

 SECOND DROWNED

And sparrows and daisies?

 THIRD DROWNED

Tiddlers in a jamjar?

 FOURTH DROWNED

Buttermilk and whippets?

 FIFTH DROWNED

Rock-a-bye baby?

 FIRST DROWNED

Washing on the line?

 e]

 FIRST VOICE (Very softly)

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night
in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat
there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are
sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers,
the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher,
postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman,
drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot
cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft
or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux,
bridesmaided by glowworms down the aisles of the
organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the
bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea. And
the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields,
and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed
yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly,
streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded
town fast, and slow, asleep. And you alone can hear the
invisible starfall, the darkest-beforedawn minutely dewgrazed
stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the
Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover,
the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional
salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row,
it is the grass growing on Llaregyb Hill, dewfall, starfall,
the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.

Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in
bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and
bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes,
fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a
domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves;
in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night
in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its
hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot,
text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours
done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night
neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the
Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of
Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed;
tumbling by the Sailors Arms.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

Come closer now.

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the
slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you
can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms. and petticoats
over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth,
Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching
pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the
eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes
and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes
and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.

From where you are, you can hear their dreams.

Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain, asleep in his
bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best
cabin of Schooner House dreams of

 SECOND VOICE

never such seas as any that swamped the decks of his S.S.
Kidwelly bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery
sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark where the fish
come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and
the long drowned nuzzle up to him.

 FIRST DROWNED

Remember me, Captain?

 CAPTAIN CAT

You're Dancing Williams!

 FIRST DROWNED

I lost my step in Nantucket.

 SECOND DROWNED

Do you see me, Captain? the white bone talking? I'm Tom-Fred
the donkeyman...we shared the same girl once...her name was
Mrs Probert...

 WOMAN'S VOICE

Rosie Probert, thirty three Duck Lane. Come on up, boys,
I'm dead.

 THIRD DROWNED

Hold me, Captain, I'm Jonah Jarvis, come to a bad end, very
enjoyable.

 FOURTH DROWNED

Alfred Pomeroy Jones, sea-lawyer, born in Mumbles, sung
like a linnet, crowned you with a flagon, tattooed with
mermaids, thirst like a dredger, died of blisters.

 FIRST DROWNED

This skull at your earhole is

 FIFTH DROWNED

Curly Bevan. Tell my auntie it was me that pawned the ormolu
clock.

 CAPTAIN CAT

Aye, aye, Curly.

 SECOND DROWNED

Tell my missus no I never

 THIRD DROWNED

I never done what she said I never.

 FOURTH DROWNED

Yes they did.

 FIFTH DROWNED

And who brings coconuts and shawls and parrots to my
Gwen now?

 FIRST DROWNED

How's it above?

 SECOND DROWNED

Is there rum and laverbread?

 THIRD DROWNED

Bosoms and robins?

 FOURTH DROWNED

Concertinas?

 FIFTH DROWNED

Ebenezer's bell?

 FIRST DROWNED

Fighting and onions?

 SECOND DROWNED

And sparrows and daisies?

 THIRD DROWNED

Tiddlers in a jamjar?

 FOURTH DROWNED

Buttermilk and whippets?

 FIFTH DROWNED

Rock-a-bye baby?

 FIRST DROWNED

Washing on the line?

 SECOND DROWNED

And old girls in the snug?

 THIRD DROWNED

How's the tenors in Dowlais?

 FOURTH DROWNED

Who milks the cows in Maesgwyn?

 FIFTH DROWNED

When she smiles, is there dimples?

 FIRST DROWNED

What's the smell of parsley?

 CAPTAIN CAT

Oh, my dead dears!

 FIRST VOICE

From where you are you can hear in Cockle Row in the spring,
moonless night, Miss Price, dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper,
dream of

 SECOND VOICE

her lover, tall as the town clock tower, Samsonsyrup-gold-maned,
whacking thighed and piping hot, thunderbolt-bass'd and
barnacle-breasted, flailing up the cockles with his eyes
like blowlamps and scooping low over her lonely loving
hotwaterbottled body.

 MR EDWARDS

Myfanwy Price!

 MISS PRICE

Mr Mog Edwards!

 MR EDWARDS

I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the
flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino,
tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill
in the whole Cloth Hall of the world. I have come to take
you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums
on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh
wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric
toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.

 MISS PRICE

I will knit you a wallet of forget-me-not blue, for the
money, to be comfy. I will warm your heart by the fire so
that you can slip it in under your vest when the shop is
closed.

 MR EDWARDS

Myfanwy, Myfanwy, before the mice gnaw at your bottom drawer
will you say

 MISS PRICE

Yes, Mog, yes, Mog, yes, yes, yes.

 MR EDWARDS

And all the bells of the tills of the town shall ring for
our wedding.

 [Noise of money-tills and chapel bells

 FIRST VOICE

Come now, drift up the dark, come up the drifting sea-dark
street now in the dark night seesawing like the sea, to the
bible-black airless attic over Jack Black the cobbler's
shop where alone and savagely Jack Black sleeps in a
nightshirt tied to his ankles with elastic and dreams of

 SECOND VOICE

chasing the naughty couples down the grassgreen gooseberried
double bed of the wood, flogging the tosspots in the
spit-and-sawdust, driving out the bare bold girls from the
sixpenny hops of his nightmares.

 JACK BLACK (Loudly)

 Ach y fi!
 Ach y fi!

 FIRST VOICE

Evans the Death, the undertaker,

 SECOND VOICE

laughs high and aloud in his sleep and curls up his toes as
he sees, upon waking fifty years ago, snow lie deep on the
goosefield behind the sleeping house; and he runs out into
the field where his mother is making welsh-cakes in the
snow, and steals a fistful of snowflakes and currants and
climbs back to bed to eat them cold and sweet under the
warm, white clothes while his mother dances in the snow
kitchen crying out for her lost currants.

 FIRST VOICE

And in the little pink-eyed cottage next to the undertaker's,
lie, alone, the seventeen snoring gentle stone of Mister
Waldo, rabbitcatcher, barber, herbalist, catdoctor, quack,
his fat pink hands, palms up, over the edge of the patchwork
quilt, his black boots neat and tidy in the washing-basin,
his bowler on a nail above the bed, a milk stout and a slice
of cold bread pudding under the pillow; and, dripping in
the dark, he dreams of

 MOTHER

 This little piggy went to market
 This little piggy stayed at home
 This little piggy had roast beef
 This little piggy had none
 And this little piggy went

 LITTLE BOY

wee wee wee wee wee

 MOTHER

all the way home to

 WIFE (Screaming)

Waldo! Wal-do!

 MR WALDO

Yes, Blodwen love?

 WIFE

Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours...

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Poor Mrs Waldo

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

What she puts up with

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Never should of married

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

If she didn't had to

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Same as her mother

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

There's a husband for you

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Bad as his father

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

And you know where he ended

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Up in the asylum

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

Crying for his ma

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Every Saturday

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

He hasn't got a leg

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

And carrying on

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

With that Mrs Beattie Morris

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Up in the quarry

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

And seen her baby

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

It's got his nose

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

Oh it makes my heart bleed

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

What he'll do for drink

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

He sold the pianola

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

And her sewing machine

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

Falling in the gutter

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Talking to the lamp-post

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

Using language

 FIRST NEIGHBOUR

Singing in the w

 SECOND NEIGHBOUR

Poor Mrs Waldo

 WIFE (Tearfully)

...Oh, Waldo, Waldo!

 MR WALDO

Hush, love, hush. I'm widower Waldo now.

 MOTHER (Screaming)

Waldo, Wal-do!

 LITTLE BOY

Yes, our mum?

 MOTHER

Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours...

 THIRD NEIGHBOUR

Black as a chimbley

 FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

Ringing doorbells

 THIRD NEIGHBOUR

Breaking windows

 FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

Making mudpies

 THIRD NEIGHBOUR

Stealing currants

 FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

Chalking words

 THIRD NEIGHBOUR

Saw him in the bushes

 FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

Playing mwchins

 THIRD NEIGHBOUR

Send him to bed without any supper

 FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

Give him sennapods and lock him in the dark

 THIRD NEIGHBOUR

Off to the reformatory

 FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

Off to the reformatory

 TOGETHER

Learn him with a slipper on his b.t.m.

 ANOTHER MOTHER (Screaming)

Waldo, Wal-do! what you doing with our Matti?

 LITTLE BOY

Give us a kiss, Matti Richards.

 LITTLE GIRL

Give us a penny then.

 MR WALDO

I only got a halfpenny.

 FIRST WOMAN

Lips is a penny.

 PREACHER

Will you take this woman Matti Richards

 SECOND WOMAN

Dulcie Prothero

 THIRD WOMAN

Effie Bevan

 FOURTH WOMAN

Lil the Gluepot

 FIFTH WOMAN

Mrs Flusher

 WIFE

Blodwen Bowen

 PREACHER

To be your awful wedded wife

 LITTLE BOY (Screaming)

No, no, no!

 FIRST VOICE

Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline
nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and
scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a
house for paying guests, at the top of the town, Mrs
Ogmore-Pritchard widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linoleum,
retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, who maddened
by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the
vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed
disinfectant, fidgets in her rinsed sleep, wakes in a
dream, and nudges in the ribs dead Mr Ogmore, dead Mr
Pritchard, ghostly on either side.

 MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

Mr Ogmore!

Mr Pritchard!

It is time to inhale your balsam.

 MR OGMORE

Oh, Mrs Ogmore!

 MR PRITCHARD

Oh, Mrs Pritchard!

 MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

Soon it will be time to get up.

Tell me your tasks, in order.

 MR OGMORE

I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas.

 MR PRITCHARD

I must take my cold bath which is good for me.

 MR OGMORE

I must wear my flannel band to ward off sciatica.

 MR PRITCHARD

I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron.

 MR OGMORE

I must blow my nose.

 MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

In the garden, if you please.

 MR OGMORE

In a piece of tissue-paper which I afterwards burn.

 MR PRITCHARD

I must take my salts which are nature's friend.

 MR OGMORE

I must boil the drinking water because of germs.

 MR PRITCHARD

I must make my herb tea which is free from tannin.

 MR OGMORE

And have a charcoal biscuit which is good for me.

 MR PRITCHARD

I may smoke one pipe of asthma mixture.

 MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

In the woodshed, if you please.

 MR PRITCHARD

And dust the parlour and spray the canary.

 MR OGMORE

I must put on rubber gloves and search the peke for fleas.

 MR PRITCHARD

I must dust the blinds and then I must raise them.

 MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.

 FIRST VOICE

In Butcher Beynon's, Gossamer Beynon, daughter, schoolteacher,
dreaming deep, daintily ferrets under a fluttering hummock
of chicken's feathers in a slaughterhouse that has chintz
curtains and a three-pieced suite, and finds, with no surprise,
a small rough ready man with a bushy tail winking in a paper
carrier.

 GOSSAMER BEYNON

At last, my love,

 FIRST VOICE

sighs Gossamer Beynon. And the bushy tail wags rude and ginger.

"