I, In My Intricate Image
I
I,
in
my
intricate
image,
stride
on
two
levels,
Forged
in
man's
minerals,
the
brassy
orator
Laying
my
ghost
in
metal,
The
scales
of
this
twin
world
tread
on
the
double,
My
half
ghost
in
armour
hold
hard
in
death's
corridor,
To
my
man-iron
sidle.
Beginning
with
doom
in
the
bulb,
the
spring
unravels,
Bright
as
her
spinning-wheels,
the
colic
season
Worked
on
a
world
of
petals;
She
threads
off
the
sap
and
needles,
blood
and
bubble
Casts
to
the
pine
roots,
raising
man
like
a
mountain
Out
of
the
naked
entrail.
Beginning
with
doom
in
the
ghost,
and
the
springing
marvels,
Image
of
images,
my
metal
phantom
Forcing
forth
through
the
harebell,
My
man
of
leaves
and
the
bronze
root,
mortal,
unmortal,
I,
in
my
fusion
of
rose
and
male
motion,
Create
this
twin
miracle.
This
is
the
fortune
of
manhood:
the
natural
peril,
A
steeplejack
tower,
bonerailed
and
masterless,
No
death
more
natural;
Thus
the
shadowless
man
or
ox,
and
the
pictured
devil,
In
seizure
of
silence
commit
the
dead
nuisance.
The
natural
parallel.
My
images
stalk
the
trees
and
the
slant
sap's
tunnel,
No
tread
more
perilous,
the
green
steps
and
spire
Mount
on
man's
footfall,
I
with
the
wooden
insect
in
the
tree
of
nettles,
In
the
glass
bed
of
grapes
with
snail
and
flower,
Hearing
the
weather
fall.
Intricate
manhood
of
ending,
the
invalid
rivals,
Voyaging
clockwise
off
the
symboled
harbour,
Finding
the
water
final,
On
the
consumptives'
terrace
taking
their
two
farewells,
Sail
on
the
level,
the
departing
adventure,
To
the
sea-blown
arrival.
II
They
climb
the
country
pinnacle,
Twelve
winds
encounter
by
the
white
host
at
pasture,
Corner
the
mounted
meadows
in
the
hill
corral;
They
see
the
squirrel
stumble,
The
haring
snail
go
giddily
round
the
flower,
A
quarrel
of
weathers
and
trees
in
the
windy
spiral.
As
they
dive,
the
dust
settles,
The
cadaverous
gravels,
falls
thick
and
steadily,
The
highroad
of
water
where
the
seabear
and
mackerel
Turn
the
long
sea
arterial
Turning
a
petrol
face
blind
to
the
enemy
Turning
the
riderless
dead
by
the
channel
wall.
(Death
instrumental,
Splitting
the
long
eye
open,
and
the
spiral
turnkey,
Your
corkscrew
grave
centred
in
navel
and
nipple,
The
neck
of
the
nostril,
Under
the
mask
and
the
ether,
they
making
bloody
The
tray
of
knives,
the
antiseptic
funeral;
Bring
out
the
black
patrol,
Your
monstrous
officers
and
the
decaying
army,
The
sexton
sentinel,
garrisoned
under
thistles,
A
cock-on-a-dunghill
Crowing
to
Lazarus
the
morning
is
vanity,
Dust
be
your
saviour
under
the
conjured
soil.)
As
they
drown,
the
chime
travels,
Sweetly
the
diver's
bell
in
the
steeple
of
spindrift
Rings
out
the
Dead
Sea
scale;
And,
clapped
in
water
till
the
triton
dangles,
Strung
by
the
flaxen
whale-weed,
from
the
hangman's
raft,
Hear
they
the
salt
glass
breakers
and
the
tongues
of
burial.
(Turn
the
sea-spindle
lateral,
The
grooved
land
rotating,
that
the
stylus
of
lightning
Dazzle
this
face
of
voices
on
the
moon-turned
table,
Let
the
wax
disk
babble
Shames
and
the
damp
dishonours,
the
relic
scraping.
These
are
your
years'
recorders.
The
circular
world
stands
still.)
III
They
suffer
the
undead
water
where
the
turtle
nibbles,
Come
unto
sea-stuck
towers,
at
the
fibre
scaling,
The
flight
of
the
carnal
skull
And
the
cell-stepped
thimble;
Suffer,
my
topsy-turvies,
that
a
double
angel
Sprout
from
the
stony
lockers
like
a
tree
on
Aran.
Be
by
your
one
ghost
pierced,
his
pointed
ferrule,
Brass
and
the
bodiless
image,
on
a
stick
of
folly
Star-set
at
Jacob's
angle,
Smoke
hill
and
hophead's
valley,
And
the
five-fathomed
Hamlet
on
his
father's
coral
Thrusting
the
tom-thumb
vision
up
the
iron
mile.
Suffer
the
slash
of
vision
by
the
fin-green
stubble,
Be
by
the
ships'
sea
broken
at
the
manstring
anchored
The
stoved
bones'
voyage
downward
In
the
shipwreck
of
muscle;
Give
over,
lovers,
locking,
and
the
seawax
struggle,
Love
like
a
mist
or
fire
through
the
bed
of
eels.
And
in
the
pincers
of
the
boiling
circle,
The
sea
and
instrument,
nicked
in
the
locks
of
time,
My
great
blood's
iron
single
In
the
pouring
town,
I,
in
a
wind
on
fire,
from
green
Adam's
cradle,
No
man
more
magical,
clawed
out
the
crocodile.
Man
was
the
scales,
the
death
birds
on
enamel,
Tail,
Nile,
and
snout,
a
saddler
of
the
rushes,
Time
in
the
hourless
houses
Shaking
the
sea-hatched
skull,
And,
as
for
oils
and
ointments
on
the
flying
grail,
All-hollowed
man
wept
for
his
white
apparel.
Man
was
Cadaver's
masker,
the
harnessing
mantle,
Windily
master
of
man
was
the
rotten
fathom,
My
ghost
in
his
metal
neptune
Forged
in
man's
mineral.
This
was
the
god
of
beginning
in
the
intricate
seawhirl,
And
my
images
roared
and
rose
on
heaven's
hill.
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas (born October 27, 1914, Swansea, Glamorgan [now in Swansea], Wales—died November 9, 1953, New York, New York, U.S.) Welsh poet and prose writer whose work is known for its comic exuberance, rhapsodic lilt, and pathos. His personal life, punctuated by reckless bouts of drinking, was notorious. Thomas spent his childhood in southwestern Wales. His father taught English at the Swansea grammar school, which in due course the boy attended. Because Dylan’s mother was a farmer’s daughter, he had a country home he could go to when on holiday. His poem “Fern Hill” (1946) describes its joys.