On the ninth of November, 1953, a few days after his thirty-ninth birthday, Dylan Thomas died in New York. At the time of his death a new poem was still unfinished, and the collaboration with Stravinsky, planned for the end of the year, had not even begun. The survival of Under Milkwood is a remarkable piece of good fortune, for it was not completed until Thomas came within a month of his death, though he had worked intermittently on the play for nearly ten years. There was no time for any final revision of the text by the poet himself, but we are justified in regarding what he has left as a complete work. —Preface, Under Milkwood
From Under Milkwood
Dylan ThomasROSIE PROBET (Softly)
What seas did you see
Tom Cat, Tom Cat,
In your sailoring days
Long long ago?
What sea beasts were
In the wavery green
When you were my master?CAPTAIN CAT
I’ll tell you the truth.
Seas barking like seals,
Blue seas and green,
Seas covered with eels
And mermen and whales.ROSIE PROBERT
What seas did you sail
Old whaler when
On the blubbery waves
Between Frisco and Wales
You were my bosun?CAPTAIN CAT
As true as I’m here
Dear you and Tom Cat’s tart
You landlubber Rosie
You cosy love
My easy as easy
My true sweetheart,
Seas green as a bean
Seas gliding with swans
In the seal-barking moon.ROSIE PROBERT
What seas were you rocking
My little deck hand
My favorite husband
In your seaboots and hunger
My duck my whaler
My honey my daddy
My pretty sugar sailor
With my name on your belly
When you were a boy
Long long ago?CAPTAIN CAT
I’ll tell you no lies.
The only sea I saw
Was the seasaw sea
With you riding on it.
Lie down, lie easy
let me shipwreck in your thighs.ROSIE PROBERT
Knock twice, Jack,
At the door of my grave
And ask for Rosie.CAPTAIN CAT
Rosie Probert.ROSIE PROBERT
Remember her.
She is forgetting.
The earth which filled her mouth
Is vanishing from her.
Remember me.
I have forgotten you.
I am going into the darkness of the
…..darknes for ever.
I have forgotten that I was ever born...
