"One Christmas was so much like the other...That I can never remember
Whether it snowed for six days and nights when I was twelve,
Or it snowed for twelve days and nights when I was six."
from A Child's Christmas in Wales
This is a picture of our old Pennsylvania farm on some forgotten winter day. Of course, it sometimes rained-- but in my mind, those long ago Decembers were white.
My favorite holiday story is "A Child's Christmas In Wales," by Dylan Thomas. I read it every year, and we also have a DVD of a sweet television movie made in 1987. The story is about Dylan Thomas' own childhood, and of Christmas in a small Welsh town by the sea. With his gift for imagery and poetry, in a few luminous words he evokes the old-fashioned winter setting and childhood emotion. I think it's as good as his "Fern Hill," poem, and that's saying something.
After a long, busy Christmas day of snowy play, Welsh mischief, useful and non-useful presents, rich dinners, candy, nutty relatives and other unusual excitement, Dylan Thomas closes the tired child's story with these beautiful words:
"Looking through my bedroom window,
Out into the moonlight
And the unending smoke-colored snow,
I could see the lights in the windows
Of the other houses on our hill,
And hear the music rising from them
Up the long, steadily falling night.
I turned the gas down, I got into bed.
I said some words to the close and holy darkness,
And then I slept."
No comments:
Post a Comment