David Castleman
WHOSE DAUGHTER? WHOSE MOTHER?
Of monsters there are many on the moors
and in the crystal forest under trees,
and skulking in the caves by ocean shores
where they whimper in the sea's coldest breeze,
but unworldlier far is that haggard ragged hag
rummaging the refuse of our city
like a rat, till God's Benign Moneybag
spills out the sun, human truths and pity.
The garbage she collects becomes her food
and cloth and lamplit daily amusement,
and she prates and she animates her good
night's pickings, in adequate tenement:
she maunders to flowers found last night, a stone,
a picture of a pert maid, or a son.
DYLAN THOMAS
This was no madly blessed auld Keltic bard
so pathologically alcoholic
and frighteningly apart in his heart
of hearts, denied love's enlightening tonic.
Neither was he a bard learned and sage
nor a god-like boy with one golden voice,
nor robbed his youth to fortify his age
because his blood flowed cold and without noise.
He wasn't one of those randy blackguards
conceived as lightning stung some leech-swum swamp,
whose mystical affinity for words
mantled a grim heroism in pomp.
He was undemocratic and a poet
and laughed with horror, and a droll wit.
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