Yesterday I got carried away talking about Saint Swithin I barely mentioned Dylan Thomas. So I pulled another line from his poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” for the Sunday Chalkboard.
Dylan Thomas was born in Wales just before World War I. He was known to be more of a Romantic poet, which made him a little different than his contemporaries. Many poets between the two World Wars and into the 1950’s wrote with more of a social flair. Dylan Thomas never went that route and I think that is what made him one of my favorite writers.
To me he was like a Percy Bysshe Shelley for the 20th century. Unfortunately for the second half of the century he died young. Thomas pounded eighteen shots of whiskey at a bar in Greenwich Village in 1953 and died at the age of thirty nine.
Maybe it was a fitting ending to his life when you think of the poem. The poem touches on how different types of man look at life and the final outcome, death. It takes the perspective from a son telling his dad at the end of his life to fight to the end. Love life to the fullest until that final breath.
…and that was what Dylan Thomas sure as hell did.
You know what just popped into my head?
Fuck death!
It’s going to happen to all of us eventually.
Why pay attention to it?
I’ve been counting down the years on past Chalkboards. Recently I wrote that I have just twenty eight more summers left.
Why give death that credit?
We all have our own definition of living life to the fullest. If I do have twenty eight summers left or twenty seven and a half at this point….
…I am sure as fuck not going gentle into that last night. Leave the light on for me Tom Bodett. I don’t know when this rager is going to end.
For so long I keep punting the ball on happiness.
Things will get better after the divorce.
Things will get better when the kids are a little older.
Things will get better if I work harder at my job.
Things will get better with a little more water under the bridge.
Things are better right now and will only get better if you go for the first down on every fucking play.
Don’t punt the ball!!!
Alright….. it is Sunday the Sixteenth of July. We are on the hump weekend of summer. Do yourself a solid and have some sweet corn for dinner tonight. Nothing screams middle of July like a steaming cob of corn.
Do yourself another favor, read this poem and decide if you are wise, good, wild or grave.
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
