Project Gutenberg Australia a treasure-trove of literature treasure found hidden with no evidence of ownership

BROWSE the site for other works by this author (and our other authors) or SEARCH the entire site with Google Site Search

Title: Under Milk Wood -- A Play for Voices
Author: Dylan Thomas
eBook No.: 0608221h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: June 2006
Date most recently updated: Nov 2015

This eBook was produced by: Colin Choat

View our licence and header

*

Read our other ebooks by Dylan Thomas

Under Milk Wood
A Play for Voices

by

Dylan Thomas

First published 1954

                        UNDER MILK WOOD







        [Silence]



        FIRST VOICE (Very softly)



To begin at the beginning:



It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless

and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,

courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the

sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.

The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night

in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat

there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,

the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds.

And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are

sleeping now.



Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers,

the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher,

postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman,

drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot

cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft

or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux,

bridesmaided by glowworms down the aisles of the

organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the

bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea. And

the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields,

and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed

yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly,

streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.



You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.

Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded

town fast, and slow, asleep. And you alone can hear the

invisible starfall, the darkest-beforedawn minutely dewgrazed

stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the

Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover,

the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.



Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional

salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row,

it is the grass growing on Llaregyb Hill, dewfall, starfall,

the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.



Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in

bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and

bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes,

fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a

domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves;

in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night

in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its

hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot,

text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours

done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night

neddying among the snuggeries of babies.



Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the

Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of

Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed;

tumbling by the Sailors Arms.



Time passes. Listen. Time passes.



Come closer now.



Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the

slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you

can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms. and petticoats

over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth,

Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching

pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the

eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes

and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes

and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.



From where you are, you can hear their dreams.



Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain, asleep in his

bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best

cabin of Schooner House dreams of



        SECOND VOICE



never such seas as any that swamped the decks of his S.S.

Kidwelly bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery

sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark where the fish

come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and

the long drowned nuzzle up to him.



        FIRST DROWNED



Remember me, Captain?



        CAPTAIN CAT



You're Dancing Williams!



        FIRST DROWNED



I lost my step in Nantucket.



        SECOND DROWNED



Do you see me, Captain? the white bone talking? I'm Tom-Fred

the donkeyman...we shared the same girl once...her name was

Mrs Probert...



        WOMAN'S VOICE



Rosie Probert, thirty three Duck Lane. Come on up, boys,

I'm dead.



        THIRD DROWNED



Hold me, Captain, I'm Jonah Jarvis, come to a bad end, very

enjoyable.



        FOURTH DROWNED



Alfred Pomeroy Jones, sea-lawyer, born in Mumbles, sung

like a linnet, crowned you with a flagon, tattooed with

mermaids, thirst like a dredger, died of blisters.



        FIRST DROWNED



This skull at your earhole is



        FIFTH DROWNED



Curly Bevan. Tell my auntie it was me that pawned the ormolu

clock.



        CAPTAIN CAT



Aye, aye, Curly.



        SECOND DROWNED



Tell my missus no I never



        THIRD DROWNED



I never done what she said I never.



        FOURTH DROWNED



Yes they did.



        FIFTH DROWNED



And who brings coconuts and shawls and parrots to my

Gwen now?



        FIRST DROWNED



How's it above?



        SECOND DROWNED



Is there rum and laverbread?



        THIRD DROWNED



Bosoms and robins?



        FOURTH DROWNED



Concertinas?



        FIFTH DROWNED



Ebenezer's bell?



        FIRST DROWNED



Fighting and onions?



        SECOND DROWNED



And sparrows and daisies?



        THIRD DROWNED



Tiddlers in a jamjar?



        FOURTH DROWNED



Buttermilk and whippets?



        FIFTH DROWNED



Rock-a-bye baby?



        FIRST DROWNED



Washing on the line?



        SECOND DROWNED



And old girls in the snug?



        THIRD DROWNED



How's the tenors in Dowlais?



        FOURTH DROWNED



Who milks the cows in Maesgwyn?



        FIFTH DROWNED



When she smiles, is there dimples?



        FIRST DROWNED



What's the smell of parsley?



        CAPTAIN CAT



Oh, my dead dears!



        FIRST VOICE



From where you are you can hear in Cockle Row in the spring,

moonless night, Miss Price, dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper,

dream of



        SECOND VOICE



her lover, tall as the town clock tower, Samsonsyrup-gold-maned,

whacking thighed and piping hot, thunderbolt-bass'd and

barnacle-breasted, flailing up the cockles with his eyes

like blowlamps and scooping low over her lonely loving

hotwaterbottled body.



        MR EDWARDS



Myfanwy Price!



        MISS PRICE



Mr Mog Edwards!



        MR EDWARDS



I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the

flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino,

tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill

in the whole Cloth Hall of the world. I have come to take

you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums

on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh

wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric

toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.



        MISS PRICE



I will knit you a wallet of forget-me-not blue, for the

money, to be comfy. I will warm your heart by the fire so

that you can slip it in under your vest when the shop is

closed.



        MR EDWARDS



Myfanwy, Myfanwy, before the mice gnaw at your bottom drawer

will you say



        MISS PRICE



Yes, Mog, yes, Mog, yes, yes, yes.



        MR EDWARDS



And all the bells of the tills of the town shall ring for

our wedding.



              [Noise of money-tills and chapel bells



        FIRST VOICE



Come now, drift up the dark, come up the drifting sea-dark

street now in the dark night seesawing like the sea, to the

bible-black airless attic over Jack Black the cobbler's

shop where alone and savagely Jack Black sleeps in a

nightshirt tied to his ankles with elastic and dreams of



        SECOND VOICE



chasing the naughty couples down the grassgreen gooseberried

double bed of the wood, flogging the tosspots in the

spit-and-sawdust, driving out the bare bold girls from the

sixpenny hops of his nightmares.



        JACK BLACK (Loudly)



        Ach y fi!

        Ach y fi!



        FIRST VOICE



Evans the Death, the undertaker,



        SECOND VOICE



laughs high and aloud in his sleep and curls up his toes as

he sees, upon waking fifty years ago, snow lie deep on the

goosefield behind the sleeping house; and he runs out into

the field where his mother is making welsh-cakes in the

snow, and steals a fistful of snowflakes and currants and

climbs back to bed to eat them cold and sweet under the

warm, white clothes while his mother dances in the snow

kitchen crying out for her lost currants.



        FIRST VOICE



And in the little pink-eyed cottage next to the undertaker's,

lie, alone, the seventeen snoring gentle stone of Mister

Waldo, rabbitcatcher, barber, herbalist, catdoctor, quack,

his fat pink hands, palms up, over the edge of the patchwork

quilt, his black boots neat and tidy in the washing-basin,

his bowler on a nail above the bed, a milk stout and a slice

of cold bread pudding under the pillow; and, dripping in

the dark, he dreams of



        MOTHER



    This little piggy went to market

    This little piggy stayed at home

    This little piggy had roast beef

    This little piggy had none

    And this little piggy went



        LITTLE BOY



wee wee wee wee wee



        MOTHER



all the way home to



        WIFE (Screaming)



Waldo! Wal-do!



        MR WALDO



Yes, Blodwen love?



        WIFE



Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours...



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Poor Mrs Waldo



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



What she puts up with



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Never should of married



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



If she didn't had to



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Same as her mother



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



There's a husband for you



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Bad as his father



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



And you know where he ended



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Up in the asylum



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



Crying for his ma



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Every Saturday



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



He hasn't got a leg



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



And carrying on



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



With that Mrs Beattie Morris



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Up in the quarry



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



And seen her baby



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



It's got his nose



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



Oh it makes my heart bleed



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



What he'll do for drink



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



He sold the pianola



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



And her sewing machine



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



Falling in the gutter



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Talking to the lamp-post



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



Using language



        FIRST NEIGHBOUR



Singing in the w



        SECOND NEIGHBOUR



Poor Mrs Waldo



        WIFE (Tearfully)



...Oh, Waldo, Waldo!



        MR WALDO



Hush, love, hush. I'm widower Waldo now.



        MOTHER (Screaming)



Waldo, Wal-do!



        LITTLE BOY



Yes, our mum?



        MOTHER



Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours...



        THIRD NEIGHBOUR



Black as a chimbley



        FOURTH NEIGHBOUR



Ringing doorbells



        THIRD NEIGHBOUR



Breaking windows



        FOURTH NEIGHBOUR



Making mudpies



        THIRD NEIGHBOUR



Stealing currants



        FOURTH NEIGHBOUR



Chalking words



        THIRD NEIGHBOUR



Saw him in the bushes



        FOURTH NEIGHBOUR



Playing mwchins



        THIRD NEIGHBOUR



Send him to bed without any supper



        FOURTH NEIGHBOUR



Give him sennapods and lock him in the dark



        THIRD NEIGHBOUR



Off to the reformatory



        FOURTH NEIGHBOUR



Off to the reformatory



        TOGETHER



Learn him with a slipper on his b.t.m.



        ANOTHER MOTHER (Screaming)



Waldo, Wal-do! what you doing with our Matti?



        LITTLE BOY



Give us a kiss, Matti Richards.



        LITTLE GIRL



Give us a penny then.



        MR WALDO



I only got a halfpenny.



        FIRST WOMAN



Lips is a penny.



        PREACHER



Will you take this woman Matti Richards



        SECOND WOMAN



Dulcie Prothero



        THIRD WOMAN



Effie Bevan



        FOURTH WOMAN



Lil the Gluepot



        FIFTH WOMAN



Mrs Flusher



        WIFE



Blodwen Bowen



        PREACHER



To be your awful wedded wife



        LITTLE BOY (Screaming)



No, no, no!



        FIRST VOICE



Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline

nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and

scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a

house for paying guests, at the top of the town, Mrs

Ogmore-Pritchard widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linoleum,

retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, who maddened

by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the

vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed

disinfectant, fidgets in her rinsed sleep, wakes in a

dream, and nudges in the ribs dead Mr Ogmore, dead Mr

Pritchard, ghostly on either side.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



Mr Ogmore!



Mr Pritchard!



It is time to inhale your balsam.



        MR OGMORE



Oh, Mrs Ogmore!



        MR PRITCHARD



Oh, Mrs Pritchard!



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



Soon it will be time to get up.



Tell me your tasks, in order.



        MR OGMORE



I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas.



        MR PRITCHARD



I must take my cold bath which is good for me.



        MR OGMORE



I must wear my flannel band to ward off sciatica.



        MR PRITCHARD



I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron.



        MR OGMORE



I must blow my nose.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



In the garden, if you please.



        MR OGMORE



In a piece of tissue-paper which I afterwards burn.



        MR PRITCHARD



I must take my salts which are nature's friend.



        MR OGMORE



I must boil the drinking water because of germs.



        MR PRITCHARD



I must make my herb tea which is free from tannin.



        MR OGMORE



And have a charcoal biscuit which is good for me.



        MR PRITCHARD



I may smoke one pipe of asthma mixture.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



In the woodshed, if you please.



        MR PRITCHARD



And dust the parlour and spray the canary.



        MR OGMORE



I must put on rubber gloves and search the peke for fleas.



        MR PRITCHARD



I must dust the blinds and then I must raise them.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.



        FIRST VOICE



In Butcher Beynon's, Gossamer Beynon, daughter, schoolteacher,

dreaming deep, daintily ferrets under a fluttering hummock

of chicken's feathers in a slaughterhouse that has chintz

curtains and a three-pieced suite, and finds, with no surprise,

a small rough ready man with a bushy tail winking in a paper

carrier.



        GOSSAMER BEYNON



At last, my love,



        FIRST VOICE



sighs Gossamer Beynon. And the bushy tail wags rude and ginger.



        ORGAN MORGAN



Help,



        SECOND VOICE



cries Organ Morgan, the organist, in his dream,



        ORGAN MORGAN



There is perturbation and music in Coronation Street! All

the spouses are honking like geese and the babies singing

opera. P.C. Attila Rees has got his truncheon out and is

playing cadenzas by the pump, the cows from Sunday Meadow

ring like reindeer, and on the roof of Handel Villa see the

Women's Welfare hoofing, bloomered, in the moon.



        FIRST VOICE



At the sea-end of town, Mr and Mrs Floyd, the cocklers, are

sleeping as quiet as death, side by wrinkled side, toothless,

salt and brown, like two old kippers in a box.



And high above, in Salt Lake Farm, Mr Utah Watkins counts,

all night, the wife-faced sheep as they leap the fences on

the hill, smiling and knitting and bleating just like Mrs

Utah Watkins.



        UTAH WATKINS (Yawning)



Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, forty-eight,

eighty-nine...



        MRS UTAH WATKINS (Bleating)



Knit one slip one

Knit two together

Pass the slipstitch over...



        FIRST VOICE



Ocky Milkman, drowned asleep in Cockle Street, is emptying

his churns into the Dewi River,



        OCKY MILKMAN (Whispering)



regardless of expense,



        FIRST VOICE



and weeping like a funeral.



        SECOND VOICE



Cherry Owen, next door, lifts a tankard to his lips but nothing

flows out of it. He shakes the tankard. It turns into a

fish. He drinks the fish.



        FIRST VOICE



P.C. Attila Rees lumps out of bed, dead to the dark and still

foghorning, and drags out his helmet from under the bed;

but deep in the backyard lock-up of his sleep a mean voice

murmurs



        A VOICE (Murmuring)



You'll be sorry for this in the morning,



        FIRST VOICE



and he heave-ho's back to bed. His helmet swashes in the dark.



        SECOND VOICE



Willy Nilly, postman, asleep up street, walks fourteen miles

to deliver the post as he does every day of the night, and

rat-a-tats hard and sharp on Mrs Willy Nilly.



        MRS WILLY NILLY



Don't spank me, please, teacher,



        SECOND VOICE



whimpers his wife at his side, but every night of her married

life she has been late for school.



        FIRST VOICE



Sinbad Sailors, over the taproom of the Sailors Arms, hugs

his damp pillow whose secret name is Gossamer Beynon.



A mogul catches Lily Smalls in the wash-house.



        LILY SMALLS



Ooh, you old mogul!



        SECOND VOICE



Mrs Rose Cottage's eldest, Mae, peals off her pink-and-white

skin in a furnace in a tower in a cave in a waterfall in a

wood and waits there raw as an onion for Mister Right to

leap up the burning tall hollow splashes of leaves like a

brilliantined trout.



        MAE ROSE COTTAGE (Very close and softly, drawing

             out the words)



Call me Dolores

Like they do in the stories.



        FIRST VOICE



Alone until she dies, Bessie Bighead, hired help, born in

the workhouse, smelling of the cowshed, snores bass and

gruff on a couch of straw in a loft in Salt Lake Farm and

picks a posy of daisies in Sunday Meadow to put on the grave

of Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she

wasn't looking and never kissed her again although she was

looking all the time.



And the Inspectors of Cruelty fly down into Mrs Butcher

Brynon's dream to persecute Mr Beynon for selling



        BUTCHER BEYNON



owlmeat, dogs' eyes, manchop.



        SECOND VOICE



Mr Beynon, in butcher's bloodied apron, spring-heels down

Coronation Street, a finger, not his own, in his mouth.

Straightfaced in his cunning sleep he pulls the legs of

his dreams and



        BUTCHER BEYNON



hunting on pigback shoots down the wild giblets.



        ORGAN MORGAN (High and softly)



Help!



        GOSSAMER BEYNON (Softly)



My foxy darling.



        FIRST VOICE



Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the

streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the



        SECOND VOICE



titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and

bones, ash and rind and dandruff and nailparings, saliva

and snowflakes and moulted feathers of dreams, the wrecks

and sprats and shells and fishbones, whale-juice and moonshine

and small salt fry dished up by the hidden sea.



        FIRST VOICE



The owls are hunting. Look, over Bethesda gravestones one

hoots and swoops and catches a mouse by Hannah Rees, Beloved

Wife. And in Coronation Street, which you alone can see it

is so dark under the chapel in the skies, the Reverend Eli

Jenkins, poet, preacher, turns in his deep towards-dawn

sleep and dreams of



        REV. ELI JENKINS



Eisteddfodau.



SECOND VOICE



He intricately rhymes, to the music of crwth and pibgorn,

all night long in his druid's seedy nightie in a beer-tent

black with parchs.



        FIRST VOICE



Mr Pugh, schoolmaster, fathoms asleep, pretends to be sleeping,

spies foxy round the droop of his nightcap and pssst! whistles up



        MR PUGH



Murder.



        FIRST VOICE



Mrs Organ Morgan, groceress, coiled grey like a dormouse,

her paws to her ears, conjures



        MRS ORGAN MORGAN



Silence.



        SECOND VOICE



She sleeps very dulcet in a cove of wool, and trumpeting

Organ Morgan at her side snores no louder than a

spider.



        FIRST VOICE



Mary Ann Sailors dreams of



        MARY ANN SAILORS



The Garden of Eden.



        FIRST VOICE



She comes in her smock-frock and clogs



        MARY ANN SAILORS



away from the cool scrubbed cobbled kitchen with the

Sunday-school pictures on the whitewashed wall and the

farmers' almanac hung above the settle and the sides of

bacon on the ceiling hooks, and goes down the cockleshelled

paths of that applepie kitchen garden, ducking under the

gippo's clothespegs, catching her apron on the blackcurrant

bushes, past beanrows and onion-bed and tomatoes ripening

on the wall towards the old man playing the harmonium in

the orchard, and sits down on the grass at his side and

shells the green peas that grow up through the lap of her

frock that brushes the dew.



        FIRST VOICE



In Donkey Street, so furred with sleep, Dai Bread, Polly

Garter, Nogood Boyo, and Lord Cut-Glass sigh before the

dawn that is about to be and dream of



        DAI BREAD



Harems.



        POLLY GARTER



Babies.



        NOGOOD BOYO



Nothing.



        LORD CUT-GLASS



Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.



        FIRST VOICE



Time passes. Listen. Time passes. An owl flies I home past

Bethesda, to a chapel in an oak. And the dawn inches up.



              [One distant bell-note, faintly reverberating



        FIRST VOICE



Stand on this hill. This is Llaregyb Hill, old as the hills,

high, cool, and green, and from this small circle, of stones,

made not by druids but by Mrs Beynon's Billy, you can see all

the town below you sleeping in the first of the dawn.



You can hear the love-sick woodpigeons mooning in bed. A dog

barks in his sleep, farmyards away. The town ripples like a

lake in the waking haze.



        VOICE OF A GUIDE-BOOK



Less than five hundred souls inhabit the three quaint streets

and the few narrow by-lanes and scattered farmsteads that

constitute this small, decaying watering-place which may,

indeed, be called a 'backwater of life' without disrespect

to its natives who possess, to this day, a salty individuality

of their own. The main street, Coronation Street, consists,

for the most part, of humble, two-storied houses many of which

attempt to achieve some measure of gaiety by prinking

themselves out in crude colours and by the liberal use of

pinkwash, though there are remaining a few eighteenth-century

houses of more pretension, if, on the whole, in a sad state

of disrepair. Though there is little to attract the hillclimber,

the healthseeker, the sportsman, or the weekending motorist,

the contemplative may, if sufficiently attracted to spare

it some leisurely hours, find, in its cobbled streets and

its little fishing harbour, in its several curious customs,

and in the conversation of its local 'characters,' some of

that picturesque sense of the past so frequently lacking in

towns and villages which have kept more abreast of the times.

The one place of worship, with its neglected graveyard, is of

no architectural interest. The River Dewi is said to abound in

trout, but is much poached.



                              [A cock crows



        FIRST VOICE



The principality of the sky lightens now, over our green

hill, into spring morning larked and crowed and belling.



                           [Slow bell notes



        FIRST VOICE



Who pulls the townhall bellrope but blind Captain Cat? One

by one, the sleepers are rung out of sleep this one morning

as every morning. And soon you shall see the chimneys' slow

upflying snow as Captain Cat, in sailor's cap and seaboots,

announces to-day with his loud get-out-of-bed bell.



        SECOND VOICE



The Reverend Eli Jenkins, in Bethesda House, gropes out of

bed into his preacher's black, combs back his bard's white

hair, forgets to wash, pads barefoot downstairs, opens the

front door, stands in the doorway and, looking out at the

day and up at the eternal hill, and hearing the sea break

and the gab of birds, remembers his own verses and tells

them softly to empty Coronation Street that is rising and

raising its blinds.



        REV. ELI JENKINS



Dear Gwalia! I know there are

Towns lovelier than ours,

And fairer hills and loftier far,

And groves more full of flowers,



And boskier woods more blithe with spring

And bright with birds' adorning,

And sweeter bards than I to sing

Their praise this beauteous morning.



By Cader Idris, tempest-torn,

Or Moel yr Wyddfa's glory,

Carnedd Llewelyn beauty born,

Plinlimmon old in story,



By mountains where King Arthur dreams,

By Penmaenmawr defiant,

Llaregyb Hill a molehill seems,

A pygmy to a giant.



By Sawdde, Senny, Dovey, Dee,

Edw, Eden, Aled, all,

Taff and Towy broad and free,

Llyfnant with its waterfall,



Claerwen, Cleddau, Dulais, Daw,

Ely, Gwili, Ogwr, Nedd,

Small is our River Dewi, Lord,

A baby on a rushy bed.



By Carreg Cennen, King of time,

Our Heron Head is only

A bit of stone with seaweed spread

Where gulls come to be lonely.



A tiny dingle is Milk Wood

By Golden Grove 'neath Grongar,

But let me choose and oh! I should

Love all my life and longer



To stroll among our trees and stray

In Goosegog Lane, on Donkey Down,

And hear the Dewi sing all day,

And never, never leave the town.



        SECOND VOICE



The Reverend Jenkins closes the front door. His morning

service is over.



                           [Slow bell notes



        FIRST VOICE



Now, woken at last by the out-of-bed-sleepy-head-Polly-put-

the-kettle-on townhall bell, Lily Smalls, Mrs Beynon's

treasure, comes downstairs from a dream of royalty who all

night long went larking with her full of sauce in the Milk

Wood dark, and puts the kettle on the primus ring in Mrs

Beynon's kitchen, and looks at herself in Mr Beynon's

shaving-glass over the sink, and sees:



        LILY SMALLS



Oh there's a face!

Where you get that hair from?

Got it from a old tom cat.

Give it back then, love.

Oh there's a perm!



Where you get that nose from, Lily?

Got it from my father, silly.

You've got it on upside down!

Oh there's a conk!



Look at your complexion!

Oh no, you look.

Needs a bit of make-up.

Needs a veil.

Oh there's glamour!



Where you get that smile,

Lil? Never you mind, girl.

Nobody loves you.

That's what you think.



Who is it loves you?

Shan't tell.

Come on, Lily.

Cross your heart then?

Cross my heart.



        FIRST VOICE



And very softly, her lips almost touching her reflection,

she breathes the name and clouds the shaving-glass.



        MRS BEYNON (Loudly, from above)



Lily!



        LILY SMALLS (Loudly)



Yes, mum.



        MRS BEYNON



Where's my tea, girl?



        LILY SMALLS



(Softly) Where d'you think? In the cat-box?



(Loudly) Coming up, mum.



        FIRST VOICE



Mr Pugh, in the School House opposite, takes up the morning

tea to Mrs Pugh, and whispers on the stairs



        MR. PUGH



Here's your arsenic, dear.

And your weedkiller biscuit.

I've throttled your parakeet.

I've spat in the vases.

I've put cheese in the mouseholes.

Here's your...                    [Door creaks open

        ...nice tea, dear.



        MRS PUGH



Too much sugar.



        MR PUGH



You haven't tasted it yet, dear.



        MRS PUGH



Too much milk, then. Has Mr Jenkins said his poetry?



        MR PUGH



Yes, dear.



        MRS PUGH



Then it's time to get up. Give me my glasses.



No, not my reading glasses, I want to look out.

I want to see



        SECOND VOICE



Lily Smalls the treasure down on her red knees washing the

front step.



        MRS PUGH



She's tucked her dress in her bloomers--oh, the baggage!



        SECOND VOICE



P.C. Attila Rees, ox-broad, barge-booted, stamping out of

Handcuff House in a heavy beef-red huff, black browed under

his damp helmet...



        MRS PUGH



He's going to arrest Polly Garter, mark my words.



        MR PUGH



What for, dear?



        MRS PUGH



For having babies.



        SECOND VOICE



...and lumbering down towards the strand to see that the

sea is still there.



        FIRST VOICE



Mary Ann Sailors, opening her bedroom window above the

taproom and calling out to the heavens



        MARY ANN SAILORS



I'm eighty-five years three months and a day!



        MRS PUGH



I will say this for her, she never makes a mistake.



        FIRST VOICE



Organ Morgan at his bedroom window playing chords on the

sill to the morning fishwife gulls who, heckling over Donkey

Street, observe



        DAI BREAD



Me, Dai Bread, hurrying to the bakery, pushing in my

shirt-tails, buttoning my waistcoat, ping goes a button,

why can't they sew them, no time for breakfast, nothing for

breakfast, there's wives for you.



        MRS DAI BREAD ONE



Me, Mrs Dai Bread One, capped and shawled and no old corset,

nice to be comfy, nice to be nice, clogging on the cobbles

to stir up a neighbour. Oh, Mrs Sarah, can you spare a loaf,

love? Dai Bread forgot the bread. There's a lovely morning!

How's your boils this morning? Isn't that good news now,

it's a change to sit down. Ta, Mrs Sarah.



        MRS DAI BREAD TWO



Me, Mrs Dai Bread Two, gypsied to kill in a silky scarlet

petticoat above my knees, dirty pretty knees, see my body

through my petticoat brown as a berry, high-heel shoes with

one heel missing, tortoiseshell comb in my bright black

slinky hair, nothing else at all but a dab of scent, lolling

gaudy at the doorway, tell your fortune in the tea-leaves,

scowling at the sunshine, lighting up my pipe.



        LORD CUT-GLASS



Me, Lord Cut-Glass, in an old frock-coat belonged to Eli

Jenkins and a pair of postman's trousers from Bethesda

Jumble, running out of doors to empty slops--mind there,

Rover!--and then running in again, tick tock.



        NOGOOD BOYO



Me, Nogood Boyo, up to no good in the wash-house



        MISS PRICE



Me, Miss Price, in my pretty print housecoat, deft at the

clothesline, natty as a jenny-wren, then pit-pat back to my

egg in its cosy, my crisp toast-fingers, my home-made plum

and butterpat.



        POLLY GARTER



Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast

in the garden to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our

garden, only washing. And babies. And where's their fathers

live, my love? Over the hills and far away. You're looking

up at me now. I know what you're thinking, you poor little

milky creature. You're thinking, you're no better than you

should be, Polly, and that's good enough for me. Oh, isn't

life a terrible thing, thank God?



                 [Single long high chord on strings



        FIRST VOICE



Now frying-pans spit, kettles and cats purr in the kitchen.

The town smells of seaweed and breakfast all the way down

from Bay View, where Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, in smock and turban,

big-besomed to engage the dust, picks at her starchless bread

and sips lemon-rind tea, to Bottom Cottage, where Mr Waldo,

in bowler and bib, gobbles his bubble-and-squeak and kippers

and swigs from the saucebottle. Mary Ann Sailors



        MARY ANN SAILORS



praises the Lord who made porridge.



        FIRST VOICE



Mr Pugh



        MR PUGH



remembers ground glass as he juggles his omelet.



        FIRST VOICE



Mrs Pugh



        MRS PUGH



nags the salt-cellar.



        FIRST VOICE



Willy Nilly postman



        WILLY NILLY



downs his last bucket of black brackish tea and rumbles out

bandy to the clucking back where the hens twitch and grieve

for their tea-soaked sops.



        FIRST VOICE



Mrs Willy Nilly



        MRS WILLY NILLY



full of tea to her double-chinned brim broods and bubbles

over her coven of kettles on the hissing hot range always

ready to steam open the mail.



        FIRST VOICE



The Reverend Eli Jenkins



        REV. ELI JENKINS



finds a rhyme and dips his pen in his cocoa.



        FIRST VOICE



Lord Cut-Glass in his ticking kitchen



        LORD CUT-GLASS



scampers from clock to clock, a bunch of clock-keys in one

hand, a fish-head in the other.



        FIRST VOICE



Captain Cat in his galley



        CAPTAIN CAT



blind and fine-fingered savours his sea-fry.



        FIRST VOICE



Mr and Mrs Cherry Owen, in their Donkey Street room that is

bedroom, parlour, kitchen, and scullery, sit down to last

night's supper of onions boiled in their overcoats and broth

of spuds and baconrind and leeks and bones.



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



See that smudge on the wall by the picture of Auntie Blossom?

That's where you threw the sago.



                    [Cherry Owen laughs with delight



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



You only missed me by a inch.



        CHERRY OWEN



I always miss Auntie Blossom too.



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



Remember last night? In you reeled, my boy, as drunk as a

deacon with a big wet bucket and a fish-frail full of stout

and you looked at me and you said, 'God has come home!' you

said, and then over the bucket you went, sprawling and

bawling, and the floor was all flagons and eels.



        CHERRY OWEN



Was I wounded?



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



And then you took off your trousers and you said, 'Does

anybody want a fight!' Oh, you old baboon.



        CHERRY OWEN



Give me a kiss.



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



And then you sang 'Bread of Heaven,' tenor and bass.



        CHERRY OWEN



I always sing 'Bread of Heaven.'



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



And then you did a little dance on the table.



        CHERRY OWEN



I did?

        MRS CHERRY OWEN



Drop dead!



        CHERRY OWEN



And then what did I do?



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



Then you cried like a baby and said you were a poor drunk

orphan with nowhere to go but the grave.



        CHERRY OWEN



And what did I do next, my dear?



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



Then you danced on the table all over again and said you

were King Solomon Owen and I was your Mrs Sheba.



        CHERRY OWEN (Softy)



And then?



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



And then I got you into bed and you snored all night like

a brewery.



         [Mr and Mrs Cherry Owen laugh delightedly together



        FIRST VOICE



From Beynon Butchers in Coronation Street, the smell of

fried liver sidles out with onions on its breath. And listen!

In the dark breakfast-room behind the shop, Mr and Mrs Beynon,

waited upon by their treasure, enjoy, between bites, their

everymorning hullabaloo, and Mrs Beynon slips the gristly

bits under the tasselled tablecloth to her fat cat.



                         [Cat purrs



        MRS BEYNON



She likes the liver, Ben.



        MR BEYNON



She ought to do, Bess. It's her brother's.



        MRS BEYNON (Screaming)



Oh, d'you hear that, Lily?



        LILY SMALLS



Yes, mum.



        MRS BEYNON



We're eating pusscat.



        LILY SMALLS



Yes, mum.



        MRS BEYNON



Oh, you cat-butcher!



        MR BEYNON



It was doctored, mind.



        MRS BEYNON (Hysterical)



What's that got to do with it?



        MR BEYNON



Yesterday we had mole.



        MRS BEYNON



Oh, Lily, Lily!



        MR BEYNON



Monday, otter. Tuesday, shrews.



                        [Mrs Beynon screams



        LILY SMALLS



Go on, Mrs Beynon. He's the biggest liar in town.



        MRS BEYNON



Don't you dare say that about Mr Beynon.



        LILY SMALLS



Everybody knows it, mum.



        MRS BEYNON



Mr Beynon never tells a lie. Do you, Ben?



MR BEYNON



No, Bess. And now I am going out after the corgies, with my

little cleaver.



        MRS BEYNON



Oh, Lily, Lily!



        FIRST VOICE



Up the street, in the Sailors Arms, Sinbad Sailors, grandson

of Mary Ann Sailors, draws a pint in the sunlit bar. The

ship's clock in the bar says half past eleven. Half past

eleven is opening time. The hands of the clock have stayed

still at half past eleven for fifty years. It is always

opening time in the Sailors Arms.



        SINBAD



Here's to me, Sinbad.



        FIRST VOICE



All over the town, babies and old men are cleaned and put into

their broken prams and wheeled on to the sunlit cockled cobbles

or out into the backyards under the dancing underclothes, and

left. A baby cries.



        OLD MAN



I want my pipe and he wants his bottle.



                         [School bell rings



        FIRST VOICE



Noses are wiped, heads picked, hair combed, paws scrubbed,

ears boxed, and the children shrilled off to school.



        SECOND VOICE



Fishermen grumble to their nets. Nogood Boyo goes out in

the dinghy Zanzibar, ships the oars, drifts slowly in the

dab-filled bay, and, lying on his back in the unbaled water,

among crabs' legs and tangled lines, looks up at the

spring sky.



        NOGOOD BOYO (Softly, lazily)



I don't know who's up there and I don't care.



        FIRST VOICE



He turns his head and looks up at Llaregyb Hill, and sees,

among green lathered trees, the white houses of the strewn

away farms, where farmboys whistle, dogs shout, cows low,

but all too far away for him, or you, to hear. And in the

town, the shops squeak open. Mr Edwards, in butterfly-collar

and straw-hat at the doorway of Manchester House, measures

with his eye the dawdlers-by for striped flannel shirts and

shrouds and flowery blouses, and bellows to himself in the

darkness behind his eye



        MR EDWARDS (Whispers)



I love Miss Price.



        FIRST VOICE



Syrup is sold in the post-office. A car drives to market,

full of fowls and a farmer. Milk-churns stand at Coronation

Corner like short silver policemen. And, sitting at the

open window of Schooner House, blind Captain Cat hears all

the morning of the town.



                 [School bell in background.

                 Children's voices. The noise of

                 children's feet on the cobbles



        CAPTAIN CAT (Softly, to himself)



Maggie Richards, Ricky Rhys, Tommy Powell, our Sal, little

Gerwain, Billy Swansea with the dog's voice, one of Mr

Waldo's, nasty Humphrey, Jackie with the sniff....Where's

Dicky's Albie? and the boys from Ty-pant? Perhaps they got

the rash again.



          [A sudden cry among the children's voices



        CAPTAIN CAT



Somebody's hit Maggie Richards. Two to one it's Billy Swansea.

Never trust a boy who barks.



        [A burst of yelping crying



Right again! It's Billy.



        FIRST VOICE



And the children's voices cry away.



              [Postman's rat-a-tat on door, distant



        CAPTAIN CAT (Softly, to himself)



That's Willy Nilly knocking at Bay View. Rat-a-tat, very

soft. The knocker's got a kid glove on. Who's sent a letter

to Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard?



                  [Rat-a-tat, distant again



        CAPTAIN CAT



Careful now, she swabs the front glassy. Every step's like

a bar of soap. Mind your size twelveses. That old Bessie

would beeswax the lawn to make the birds slip.



        WILLY NILLY



Morning, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



Good morning, postman.



        WILLY NILLY



Here's a letter for you with stamped and addressed envelope

enclosed, all the way from Builth Wells. A gentleman wants

to study birds and can he have accommodation for two weeks

and a bath vegetarian.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



No.

        WILLY NILLY (Persuasively)



You wouldn't know he was in the house, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.

He'd be out in the mornings at the bang of dawn with his bag

of breadcrumbs and his little telescope...



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



And come home at all hours covered with feathers. I don't

want persons in my nice clean rooms breathing all over the

chairs...



        WILLY NILLY



Cross my heart, he won't breathe.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



...and putting their feet on my carpets and sneezing on my

china and sleeping in my sheets...



        WILLY NILLY



He only wants a single bed, Mrs Ogmore. Pritchard.



                        [Door slams



        CAPTAIN CAT (Softly)



And back she goes to the kitchen to polish the potatoes.



        FIRST VOICE



Captain Cat hears Willy Nilly's feet heavy on the distant

cobbles.



        CAPTAIN CAT



One, two, three, four, five...That's Mrs Rose Cottage.

What's to-day? To-day she gets the letter from her sister

in Gorslas. How's the twins' teeth?



He's stopping at School House.



        WILLY NILLY



Morning, Mrs Pugh. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard won't have a

gentleman in from Builth Wells because he'll sleep in her

sheets, Mrs Rose Cottage's sister in Gorslas's twins have

got to have them out...



        MRS PUGH



Give me the parcel.



        WILLY NILLY



It's for Mr Pugh, Mrs Pugh.



        MRS PUGH



Never you mind. What's inside it?



        WILLY NILLY



A book called Lives of the Great Poisoners.



        CAPTAIN CAT



That's Manchester House.



        WILLY NILLY



Morning, Mr Edwards. Very small news. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard

won't have birds in the house, and Mr Pugh's bought a book

now on how to do in Mrs Pugh.



        MR EDWARDS



Have you got a letter from her?



        WILLY NILLY



Miss Price loves you with all her heart. Smelling of lavender

to-day. She's down to the last of the elderflower wine but

the quince jam's bearing up and she's knitting roses on the

doilies. Last week she sold three jars of boiled sweets,

pound of humbugs, half a box of jellybabies and six coloured

photos of Llaregyb. Yours for ever. Then twenty-one X's.



        MR EDWARDS



Oh, Willy Nilly, she's a ruby! Here's my letter. Put it

into her hands now.



            [Slow feet on cobbles, quicker feet approaching



        CAPTAIN CAT



Mr Waldo hurrying to the Sailors Arms. Pint of stout with

a egg in it.                 [Footsteps stop



(Softly) There's a letter for him.



        WILLY NILLY



It's another paternity summons, Mr Waldo.



        FIRST VOICE



The quick footsteps hurry on along the cobbles and up

three steps to the Sailors Arms.



        MR WALDO (Calling out)



Quick, Sinbad. Pint of stout. And no egg in.



        FIRST VOICE



People are moving now up and down the cobbled street.



        CAPTAIN CAT



All the women are out this morning, in the sun. You can

tell it's Spring. There goes Mrs Cherry, you can tell her

by her trotters, off she trots new as a daisy. Who's that

talking by the pump? Mrs Floyd and Boyo, talking flatfish.

What can you talk about flatfish? That's Mrs Dai Bread

One, waltzing up the street like a jelly, every time she

shakes it's slap slap slap. Who's that? Mrs Butcher Beynon

with her pet black cat, it follows her everywhere, miaow

and all. There goes Mrs Twenty-Three, important, the sun

gets up and goes down in her dewlap, when she shuts her

eyes, it's night. High heels now, in the morning too, Mrs

Rose Cottage's eldest Mae, seventeen and never been kissed

ho ho, going young and milking under my window to the

field with the nannygoats, she reminds me all the way.

Can't hear what the women are gabbing round the pump. Same

as ever. Who's having a baby, who blacked whose eye, seen

Polly Garter giving her belly an airing, there should be

a law, seen Mrs Beynon's new mauve jumper, it's her old

grey jumper dyed, who's dead, who's dying, there's a

lovely day, oh the cost of soapflakes!



                                      [Organ music, distant



        CAPTAIN CAT



Organ Morgan's at it early. You can tell it's Spring.



        FIRST VOICE



And he hears the noise of milk-cans.



        CAPTAIN CAT



Ocky Milkman on his round. I will say this, his milk's as

fresh as the dew. Half dew it is. Snuffle on, Ocky,

watering the town...Somebody's coming. Now the voices

round the pump can see somebody coming. Hush, there's a

hush! You can tell by the noise of the hush, it's Polly

Garter. (Louder) Hullo, Polly, who's there?



        POLLY GARTER (Off)



Me, love.



        CAPTAIN CAT



That's Polly Garter. (Softly) Hullo, Polly my love, can

you hear the dumb goose-hiss of the wives as they huddle

and peck or flounce at a waddle away? Who cuddled you

when? Which of their gandering hubbies moaned in Milk Wood

for your naughty mothering arms and body like a wardrobe,

love? Scrub the floors of the Welfare Hall for the

Mothers' Union Social Dance, you're one mother won't

wriggle her roly poly bum or pat her fat little buttery

feet in that wedding-ringed holy to-night though the

waltzing breadwinners snatched from the cosy smoke of the

Sailors Arms will grizzle and mope.



                                              [A cock crows



        CAPTAIN CAT



Too late, cock, too late



        SECOND VOICE



for the town's half over with its morning. The morning's

busy as bees.



                            [Organ music fades into silence



        FIRST VOICE



There's the clip clop of horses on the sunhoneyed cobbles

of the humming streets, hammering of horse- shoes, gobble

quack and cackle, tomtit twitter from the bird-ounced

boughs, braying on Donkey Down. Bread is baking, pigs are

grunting, chop goes the butcher, milk-churns bell, tills

ring, sheep cough, dogs shout, saws sing. Oh, the Spring

whinny and morning moo from the clog dancing farms, the

gulls' gab and rabble on the boat-bobbing river and sea

and the cockles bubbling in the sand, scamper of

sanderlings, curlew cry, crow caw, pigeon coo, clock

strike, bull bellow, and the ragged gabble of the

beargarden school as the women scratch and babble in Mrs

Organ Morgan's general shop where everything is sold:

custard, buckets, henna, rat-traps, shrimp-nets, sugar,

stamps, confetti, paraffin, hatchets, whistles.



        FIRST WOMAN



Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard



        SECOND WOMAN



la di da



        FIRST WOMAN



got a man in Builth Wells



        THIRD WOMAN



and he got a little telescope to look at birds



        SECOND WOMAN



Willy Nilly said



        THIRD WOMAN



Remember her first husband? He didn't need a telescope



        FIRST WOMAN



he looked at them undressing through the keyhole



        THIRD WOMAN



and he used to shout Tallyho



        SECOND WOMAN



but Mr Ogmore was a proper gentleman



        FIRST WOMAN



even though he hanged his collie.



        THIRD WOMAN



Seen Mrs Butcher Beynon?



        SECOND WOMAN



she said Butcher Beynon put dogs in the mincer



        FIRST WOMAN



go on, he's pulling her leg



        THIRD WOMAN



now don't you dare tell her that, there's a dear



        SECOND WOMAN



or she'll think he's trying to pull it off and eat it,



        FOURTH WOMAN



There's a nasty lot live here when you come to think.



        FIRST WOMAN



Look at that Nogood Boyo now



        SECOND WOMAN



too lazy to wipe his snout



        THIRD WOMAN



and going out fishing every day and all he ever brought

back was a Mrs Samuels



        FIRST WOMAN



been in the water a week.



        SECOND WOMAN



And look at Ocky Milkman's wife that nobody's ever seen



        FIRST WOMAN



he keeps her in the cupboard with the empties



        THIRD WOMAN



and think of Dai Bread with two wives



        SECONE WOMAN



one for the daytime one for the night.



        FOURTH WOMAN



Men are brutes on the quiet.



        THIRD WOMAN



And how's Organ Morgan, Mrs Morgan?



        FIRST WOMAN



you look dead beat



        SECOND WOMAN



it's organ organ all the time with him



        THIRD WOMAN



up every night until midnight playing the organ.



        MRS ORGAN MORGAN



Oh, I'm a martyr to music.



        FIRST VOICE



Outside, the sun springs down on the rough and tumbling

town. It runs through the hedges of Goosegog Lane, cuffing

the birds to sing. Spring whips green down Cockle Row, and

the shells ring out. Llaregyb this snip of a morning is

wildfruit and warm, the streets, fields, sands and waters

springing in the young sun.



        SECOND VOICE



Evans the Death presses hard with black gloves on the

coffin of his breast in case his heart jumps out,



        EVANS THE DEATH (Harshly)



Where's your dignity. Lie down.



        SECOND VOICE



Spring stirs Gossamer Beynon schoolmistress like spoon.



        GOSSAMER BEYNON (Tearfully)



Oh, what can I do? I'll never be refined if I twitch.



        SECOND VOICE



Spring this strong morning foams in a flame in Jack Black

as he cobbles a high-heeled shoe for Mrs Dai Bread Two the

gypsy, but he hammers it sternly out.



        JACK BLACK (To a hammer rhythm)



There is no leg belonging to the foot that belongs to this

shoe.



        SECOND VOICE



The sun and the green breeze ship Captain Cat sea-memory

again.



        CAPTAIN CAT



No, I'll take the mulatto, by God, who's captain here?

Parlez-vous jig jig, Madam?



        SECOND VOICE



Mary Ann Sailors says very softly to herself as she looks

out at Llaregyb Hill from the bedroom where she was born



        MARY ANN SAILORS (Loudly)



It is Spring in Llaregyb in the sun in my old age, and

this is the Chosen Land.



    [A choir of children's voices suddenly cries out on one,

                              high, glad, long, sighing note



        FIRST VOICE



And in Willy Nilly the Postman's dark and sizzling damp

tea-coated misty pygmy kitchen where the spittingcat

kettles throb and hop on the range, Mrs Willy Nilly steams

open Mr Mog Edwards' letter to Miss Myfanwy Price and

reads it aloud to Willy Nilly by the squint of the Spring

sun through the one sealed window running with tears,

while the drugged, bedraggled hens at the back door

whimper and snivel for the lickerish bog-black tea.



        MRS WILLY NILLY



From Manchester House, Llaregyb. Sole Prop: Mr Mog Edwards

(late of Twll), Linendraper, Haberdasher, Master Tailor,

Costumier. For West End Negligee, Lingerie, Teagowns,

Evening Dress, Trousseaux, Layettes. Also Ready to Wear

for All Occasions. Economical Outfitting for Agricultural

Employment Our Speciality, Wardrobes Bought. Among Our

Satisfied Customers Ministers of Religion and J.P.'s.

Fittings by Appointment. Advertising Weekly in the Twll

Bugle. Beloved Myfanwy Price my Bride in Heaven,



        MOG EDWARDS



I love you until Death do us part and then we shall be

together for ever and ever. A new parcel of ribbons has

come from Carmarthen to-day, all the colours in the

rainbow. I wish I could tie a ribbon in your hair a white

one but it cannot be. I dreamed last night you were all

dripping wet and you sat on my lap as the Reverend Jenkins

went down the street. I see you got a mermaid in your lap

he said and he lifted his hat. He is a proper Christian.

Not like Cherry Owen who said you should have thrown her

back he said. Business is very poorly. Polly Garter bought

two garters with roses but she never got stockings so what

is the use I say. Mr Waldo tried to sell me a woman's

nightie outsize he said he found it and we know where. I

sold a packet of pins to Sinbad Sailors to pick his

teeth. If this goes on I shall be in the workhouse. My

heart is in your bosom and yours is in mine. God be with

you always Myfanwy Price and keep you lovely for me in His

Heavenly Mansion. I must stop now and remain, Your Eternal,

Mog Edwards.



        MRS WILLY NILLY



And then a little message with a rubber stamp. Shop at

Mog's!!!



        FIRST VOICE.



And Willy Nilly, rumbling, jockeys out again to the

three-seated shack called the House of Commons in the back

where the hens weep, and sees, in sudden Springshine,



        SECOND VOICE



herring gulls heckling down to the harbour where the

fishermen spit and prop the morning up and eye the fishy

sea smooth to the sea's end as it lulls in blue. Green and

gold money, tobacco, tinned salmon, hats with feathers,

pots of fish-paste, warmth for the winter-to-be, weave and

leap in it rich and slippery in the flash and shapes of

fishes through the cold sea-streets. But with blue lazy

eyes the fishermen gaze at that milkmaid whispering water

with no nick or ripple as though it blew great guns and

serpents and typhooned the town.



        FISHERMAN



Too rough for fishing to-day.



        SECOND VOICE



And they thank God, and gob at a gull for luck, and

moss-slow and silent make their way uphill, from the still

still sea, towards the Sailors Arms as the children



                                               [School bell



        FIRST VOICE



spank and scamper rough and singing out of school into the

draggletail yard. And Captain Cat at his window says soft

to himself the words of their song.



        CAPTAIN CAT (To the beat of the singing)



Johnnie Crack and Flossie Snail

Kept their baby in a milking pail

Flossie Snail and Johnnie Crack

One would pull it out and one would put it back



O it's my turn now said Flossie Snail

To take the baby from the milking pail

And it's my turn now said Johnnie Crack

To smack it on the head and put it back



Johnnie Crack and Flossie Snail

Kept their baby in a milking pail

One would put it back and one would pull it out

And all it had to drink was ale and stout

For Johnnie Crack and Flossie Snail

Always used to say that stout and ale

Was good for a baby in a milking pail.



                                                [Long pause



        FIRST VOICE



The music of the spheres is heard distinctly over Milk

Wood. It is 'The Rustle of Spring.'



        SECOND VOICE



A glee-party sings in Bethesda Graveyard, gay but muffled.



        FIRST VOICE



Vegetables make love above the tenors



SECOND VOICE



and dogs bark blue in the face.



        FIRST VOICE



Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard belches in a teeny hanky and chases

the sunlight with a flywhisk, but even she cannot drive

out the Spring: from one of the finger-bowls a primrose

grows.



        SECOND VOICE



Mrs Dai Bread One and Mrs Dai Bread Two are sitting

outside their house in Donkey Lane, one darkly one plumply

blooming in the quick, dewy sun. Mrs Dai Bread Two is

looking into a crystal ball which she holds in the lap of

her dirty yellow petticoat, hard against her hard dark

thighs.



        MRS DAI BREAD TWO



Cross my palm with silver. Out of our housekeeping money.

Aah!



        MRS DAI BREAD ONE



What d'you see, lovie?



        MRS DAI BREAD TWO



I see a featherbed. With three pillows on it. And a text

above the bed. I can't read what it says, there's great

clouds blowing. Now they have blown away. God is Love, the

text says.



        MRS DAI BREAD ONE (Delighted)



That's our bed.



        MRS DAI BREAD TWO



And now it's vanished. The sun's spinning like a top.

Who's this coming out of the sun? It's a hairy little man

with big pink lips. He got a wall eye.



        MRS DAI BREAD ONE



It's Dai, it's Dai Bread!



MRS DAI BREAD TWO



Ssh! The featherbed's floating back. The little man's

taking his boots off. He's pulling his shirt over his

head. He's beating his chest with his fists. He's

climbing into bed.



        MRS DAI BREAD ONE



Go on, go on.



        MRS DAI BREAD TWO



There's two women in bed. He looks at them both, with his

head cocked on one side. He's whistling through his teeth.

Now he grips his little arms round one of the women.



        MRS DAI BREAD ONE



Which one, which one?



MRS DAI BREAD TWO



I can't see any more. There's great clouds blowing again.



        MRS DAI BREAD ONE



Ach, the mean old clouds!



                       [Pause. The children's singing fades



        FIRST VOICE



The morning is all singing. The Reverend Eli Jenkins, busy

on his morning calls, stops outside the Welfare Hall to

hear Polly Garter as she scrubs the floors for the

Mothers' Union Dance to-night.



        POLLY GARTER (Singing)



I loved a man whose name was Tom

He was strong as a bear and two yards long

I loved a man whose name was Dick

He was big as a barrel and three feet thick

And I loved a man whose name was Harry

Six feet tall and sweet as a cherry

But the one I loved best awake or asleep

Was little Willy Wee and he's six feet deep.



O Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men

And I'll never have such loving again

But little Willy Wee who took me on his knee

Little Willy Wee was the man for me.



Now men from every parish round

Run after me and roll me on the ground

But whenever I love another man back

Johnnie from the Hill or Sailing Jack

I always think as they do what they please

Of Tom Dick and Harry who were tall as trees

And most I think when I'm by their side

Of little Willy Wee who downed and died.



O Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men

And I'll never have such loving again

But little Willy Wee who took me on his knee

Little Willy Weazel was the man for me.



        REV. ELI JENKINS



Praise the Lord! We are a musical nation.



        SECOND VOICE



And the Reverend Jenkins hurries on through the town to

visit the sick with jelly and poems.



        FIRST VOICE



The town's as full as a lovebird's egg.



        MR WALDO



There goes the Reverend,



        FIRST VOICE



says Mr Waldo at the smoked herring brown window of the

unwashed Sailors Arms,



        MR WALDO



with his brolly and his odes. Fill 'em up, Sinbad, I'm on

the treacle to-day.



        SECOND VOICE



The silent fishermen flush down their pints.



        SINBAD



Oh, Mr Waldo,



        FIRST VOICE



sighs Sinbad Sailors,



        SINBAD



I dote on that Gossamer Beynon.



        FIRST VOICE



Love, sings the spring. The bedspring grass bounces

under bird's bums and lambs. And Gossamer Beynon, school

teacher, spoon-stirred and quivering, teaches her

slubberdegulleon class.



        CHILDREN'S VOICES



It was a lover and his lass, with a hey and a ho and a hey

nonny no



        GOSSAMER BEYNON



Now, now, now, your accents, children. It was a lover and

his lass, with a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no



        SINBAD SAILORS



Oh, Mr Waldo



        FIRST VOICE



says Sinbad Sailors



        SINBAD SAILORS



She's a lady all over.



        FIRST VOICE



And Mr Waldo, who is thinking of a woman soft as Eve and

sharp as sciatica to share his bread-pudding bed, answers



        MR WALDO



No lady that I know is



        SINBAD



And if only grandma'd die, cross my heart I'd go down on

my knees Mr Waldo and I'd say Miss Gossamer I'd say



        CHILDREN'S VOICES



When birds do sing hey ding a ding a ding

Sweet lovers love the Spring...



        SECOND VOICE



Polly Garter sings, still on her knees,



        POLLY GARTER



Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men

And I'll never have such



        CHILDREN



                ding a ding



        POLLY GARTER



                        again.



        FIRST VOICE



And the morning school is over, and Captain Cat at his

curtained schooner's porthole open to the Spring sun tides

hears the naughty forfeiting children tumble and rhyme on

the cobbles.



        GIRLS' VOICES



Gwennie call the boys

They make such a noise.



        GIRL



Boys boys boys

Come along to me



        GIRLS' VOICES



Boys boys boys

Kiss Gwennie where she says

Or give her a penny.

Go on, Gwennie.



        GIRL



Kiss me in Goosegog Lane

Or give me a penny.

What's your name?



        FIRST BOY



Billy.



        GIRL



Kiss me in Goosegog Lane Billy

Or give me a penny silly.



        FIRST BOY



Gwennie Gwennie

I kiss you in Goosegog Lane.

Now I haven't got to give you a penny.



        GIRLS' VOICES



Boys boys boys

Kiss Gwennie where she says

Or give her a penny.

Go on, Gwennie.



        GIRL



Kiss me on Llaregyb Hill

Or give me a penny.

What's your name?



        SECOND BOY



Johnnie Cristo.



        GIRL



Kiss me on Llaregyb Hill Johnnie Cristo

Or give me a penny mister.



        SECOND BOY



Gwennie Gwennie

I kiss you on Llaregyb Hill.

Now I haven't got to give you a penny.



        GIRLS' VOICES



Boys boys boys

Kiss Gwennie where she says

Or give her a penny.

Go on, Gwennie.



        GIRL



Kiss me in Milk Wood

Or give me a penny.

What's your name?



        THIRD BOY



Dicky.



        GIRL



Kiss me in Milk Wood Dicky

Or give me a penny quickly.



        THIRD BOY



Gwennie Gwennie

I can't kiss you in Milk Wood.



        GIRLS' VOICES



Gwennie ask him why.



        GIRL



Why?



        THIRD BOY



Because my mother says I mustn't.



        GIRLS' VOICES



Cowardy cowardy custard

Give Gwennie a penny.



        GIRL



Give me a penny.



        THIRD BOY



I haven't got any.



        GIRLS' VOICES



Put him in the river

Up to his liver

Quick quick Dirty Dick

Beat him on the bum

With a rhubarb stick.

Aiee!

Hush!



        FIRST VOICE



And the shrill girls giggle and master around him and

squeal as they clutch and thrash, and he blubbers away

downhill with his patched pants falling, and his

tear-splashed blush burns all the way as the triumphant

bird-like sisters scream with buttons in their claws and

the bully brothers hoot after him his little nickname and

his mother's shame and his father's wickedness with the

loose wild barefoot women of the hovels of the hills. It

all means nothing at all, and, howling for his milky mum,

for her cawl and buttermilk and cowbreath and welshcakes

and the fat birth-smelling bed and moonlit kitchen of her

arms, he'll never forget as he paddles blind home through

the weeping end of the world. Then his tormentors tussle

and run to the Cockle Street sweet-shop, their pennies

sticky as honey, to buy from Miss Myfanwy Price, who is

cocky and neat as a puff-bosomed robin and her small round

buttocks tight as ticks, gobstoppers big as wens that

rainbow as you suck, brandyballs, winegums, hundreds and

thousands, liquorice sweet as sick, nougat to tug and

ribbon out like another red rubbery tongue, gum to glue

in girls' curls, crimson coughdrops to spit blood,

ice-cream cornets, dandelion-and-burdock, raspberry and

cherryade, pop goes the weasel and the wind.



        SECOND VOICE



Gossamer Beynon high-heels out of school The sun hums down

through the cotton flowers of her dress into the bell of

her heart and buzzes in the honey there and couches and

kisses, lazy-loving and boozed, in her red-berried breast.

Eyes run from the trees and windows of the street,

steaming 'Gossamer,' and strip her to the nipples and the

bees. She blazes naked past the Sailors Arms, the only

woman on the Dai-Adamed earth. Sinbad Sailors places on

her thighs still dewdamp from the first mangrowing

cockcrow garden his reverent goat-bearded hands.



        GOSSAMER BEYNON



I don't care if he is common,



        SECOND VOICE



she whispers to her salad-day deep self,



        GOSSAMER BEYNON



I want to gobble him up. I don't care if he does drop his

aitches,



        SECOND VOICE



she tells the stripped and mother-of-the-world big-beamed

and Eve-hipped spring of her self,



        GOSSAMER BEYNON



so long as he's all cucumber and hooves.



        SECOND VOICE



Sinbad Sailors watches her go by, demure and proud and

schoolmarm in her crisp flower dress and sun-defying hat,

with never a look or lilt or wriggle, the butcher's

unmelting icemaiden daughter veiled for ever from the

hungry hug of his eyes.



        SINBAD SAILORS



Oh, Gossamer Beynon, why are you so proud?



        SECOND VOICE



he grieves to his guinness,



        SINBAD SAILORS



Oh, beautiful beautiful Gossamer B, I wish I wish that you

were for me. I wish you were not so educated.



        SECOND VOICE



She feels his goatbeard tickle her in the middle of the

world like a tuft of wiry fire, and she turns in a terror

of delight away from his whips and whiskery conflagration,

and sits down in the kitchen to a plate heaped high with

chips and the kidneys of lambs.



        FIRST VOICE



In the blind-drawn dark dining-room of School House, dusty

and echoing as a dining-room in a vault, Mr and Mrs Pugh

are silent over cold grey cottage pie. Mr Pugh reads, as

he forks the shroud meat in, from Lives of the Great

Poisoners. He has bound a plain brown-paper cover round

the book. Slyly, between slow mouthfuls, he sidespies up

at Mrs Pugh, poisons her with his eye, then goes on

reading. He underlines certain passages and smiles in

secret.



        MRS PUGH



Persons with manners do not read at table,



        FIRST VOICE



says Mrs Pugh. She swallows a digestive tablet as big as a

horse-pill, washing it down with clouded peasoup water.



                                                     [Pause



        MRS PUGH



Some persons were brought up in pigsties.



        MR PUGH



Pigs don't read at table, dear.



        FIRST VOICE



Bitterly she flicks dust from the broken cruet. It settles

on the pie in a thin gnat-rain.



        MR PUGH



Pigs can't read, my dear.



        MRS PUGH



I know one who can.



        FIRST VOICE



Alone in the hissing laboratory of his wishes, Mr Pugh

minces among bad vats and jeroboams, tiptoes through

spinneys of murdering herbs, agony dancing in his

crucibles, and mixes especially for Mrs Pugh a venomous

porridge unknown to toxicologists which will scald and

viper through her until her ears fall off like figs, her

toes grow big and black as balloons, and steam comes

screaming out of her navel.



        MR PUGH



You know best, dear,



        FIRST VOICE



says Mr Pugh, and quick as a flash he ducks her in rat

soup.



        MRS PUGH



What's that book by your trough, Mr Pugh?



        MR PUGH



It's a theological work, my dear. Lives of the Great

Saints.



        FIRST VOICE



Mrs Pugh smiles. An icicle forms in the cold air of the

dining-vault.



        MRS PUGH



I saw you talking to a saint this morning. Saint Polly

Garter. She was martyred again last night. Mrs Organ

Morgan saw her with Mr Waldo.



        MRS ORGAN MORGAN



And when they saw me they pretended they were looking for

nests,



        SECOND VOICE



said Mrs Organ Morgan to her husband, with her mouth full

of fish as a pelican's.



        MRS ORGAN MORGAN



But you don't go nesting in long combinations, I said to

myself, like Mr Waldo was wearing, and your dress nearly

over your head like Polly Garter's. Oh, they didn't fool me.



        SECOND VOICE



One big bird gulp, and the flounder's gone. She licks her

lips and goes stabbing again.



        MRS ORGAN MORGAN



And when you think of all those babies she's got, then all

I can say is she'd better give up bird nesting that's all

I can say, it isn't the right kind of hobby at all for a

woman that can't say No even to midgets. Remember Bob

Spit? He wasn't any bigger than a baby and he gave her

two. But they're two nice boys, I will say that, Fred Spit

and Arthur. Sometimes I like Fred best and sometimes I

like Arthur. Who do you like best, Organ?



        ORGAN MORGAN



Oh, Bach without any doubt. Bach every time for me.



        MRS ORGAN MORGAN



Organ Morgan, you haven't been listening to a word I said.

It's organ organ all the time with you.



        FIRST VOICE



And she bursts into tears, and, in the middle of her salty

howling, nimbly spears a small flatfish and pelicans it

whole.



        ORGAN MORGAN



And then Palestrina,



        SECOND VOICE



says Organ Morgan.



        FIRST VOICE



Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down

alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps

and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for

each year of his loony age, and watches, with love, their

black-and-white moony loudlipped faces tocking the earth

away: slow clocks, quick clocks, pendulumed heart-knocks,

china, alarm, grandfather, cuckoo; clocks shaped like

Noah's whirring Ark, clocks that bicker in marble ships,

clocks in the wombs of glass women, hourglass chimers,

tu-wit-tu-woo clocks, clocks that pluck tunes, Vesuvius

clocks all black bells and lava, Niagara clocks that

cataract their ticks, old time-weeping clocks with ebony

beards, clocks with no hands for ever drumming out time

without ever knowing what time it is. His sixty-six

singers are all set at different hours. Lord Cut-Glass

lives in a house and a life at siege. Any minute or dark

day now, the unknown enemy will loot and savage downhill,

but they will not catch him napping. Sixty-six different

times in his fish-slimy kitchen ping, strike, tick, chime,

and tock.



        SECOND VOICE



The lust and lilt and lather and emerald breeze and

crackle of the bird-praise and body of Spring with its

breasts full of rivering May-milk, means, to that lordly

fish-head nibbler, nothing but another nearness to the

tribes and navies of the Last Black Day who'll sear and

pillage down Armageddon Hill to his double-locked

rusty-shuttered tick-tock dust-scrabbled shack at the

bottom of the town that has fallen head over bells in love.



        POLLY GARTER



And I'll never have such loving again,



        SECOND VOICE



pretty Polly hums and longs.



        POLLY GARTER (Sings)



Now when farmers' boys on the first fair day

Come down from the hills to drink and be gay,

Before the sun sinks I'll lie there in their arms

For they're good bad boys from the lonely farms,



But I always think as we tumble into bed

Of little Willy Wee who is dead, dead, dead...



                                                 [A silence



        FIRST VOICE



The sunny slow lulling afternoon yawns and moons through

the dozy town. The sea lolls, laps and idles in, with

fishes sleeping in its lap. The meadows still as Sunday,

the shut-eye tasselled bulls, the goat-anddaisy dingles,

nap happy and lazy. The dumb duck-ponds snooze. Clouds sag

and pillow on Llaregyb Hill. Pigs grunt in a wet

wallow-bath, and smile as they snort and dream. They dream

of the acorned swill of the world, the rooting for

pig-fruit, the bagpipe dugs of the mother sow, the squeal

and snuffle of yesses of the women pigs in rut. They

mud-bask and snout in the pig-loving sun; their tails

curl; they rollick and slobber and snore to deep, smug,

after-swill sleep. Donkeys angelically drowse on Donkey

Down.



        MRS PUGH



Persons with manners,



        SECOND VOICE



snaps Mrs cold Pugh,



        MRS PUGH



do not nod at table.



        FIRST VOICE



Mr Pugh cringes awake. He puts on a soft-soaping smile: it

is sad and grey under his nicotine-eggyellow weeping

walrus Victorian moustache worn thick and long in memory

of Doctor Crippen.



        MRS PUGH



You should wait until you retire to your sty,



        SECOND VOICE



says Mrs Pugh, sweet as a razor. His fawning measly

quarter-smile freezes. Sly and silent, he foxes into his

chemist's den and there, in a hiss and prussic circle

of cauldrons and phials brimful with pox and the Black

Death, cooks up a fricassee of deadly nightshade,

nicotine, hot frog, cyanide and bat-spit for his needling

stalactite hag and bednag of a pokerbacked nutcracker

wife.



        MR PUGH



I beg your pardon, my dear,



        SECOND VOICE



he murmurs with a wheedle.



        FIRST VOICE



Captain Cat, at his window thrown wide to the sun and the

clippered seas he sailed long ago when his eyes were blue

and bright, slumbers and voyages; ear-ringed and rolling,

I Love You Rosie Probert tattooed on his belly, he brawls

with broken bottles in the fug and babel of the dark dock

bars, roves with a herd of short and good time cows in

every naughty port and twines and souses with the drowned

and blowzy-breasted dead. He weeps as he sleeps and sails.



        SECOND VOICE



One voice of all he remembers most dearly as his dream

buckets down. Lazy early Rosie with the flaxen thatch,

whom he shared with Tom-Fred the donkeyman and many

another seaman, clearly and near to him speaks from the

bedroom of her dust. In that gulf and haven, fleets by the

dozen have anchored for the little heaven of the night;

but she speaks to Captain napping Cat alone. Mrs Probert...



        ROSIE PROBERT



from Duck Lane, Jack. Quack twice and ask for Rosie



        SECOND VOICE



...is the one love of his sea-life that was sardined with

women.



        ROSIE PROBERT (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 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 rocking

My little deck hand

My favourite 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 seesaw 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 darkness for ever.

I have forgotten that I was ever born.



        CHILD



Look,



        FIRST VOICE



says a child to her mother as they pass by the window of

Schooner House,



        CHILD



Captain Cat is crying



        FIRST VOICE



Captain Cat is crying



        CAPTAIN CAT



Come back, come back,



        FIRST VOICE



up the silences and echoes of the passages of the eternal

night.



        CHILD



He's crying all over his nose,



        FIRST VOICE



says the child. Mother and child move on down the street.



        CHILD



He's got a nose like strawberries,



        FIRST VOICE



the child says; and then she forgets him too. She sees in

the still middle of the bluebagged bay Nogood Boyo fishing

from the Zanzibar.



        CHILD



Nogood Boyo gave me three pennies yesterday but I wouldn't,



        FIRST VOICE



the child tells her mother.



        SECOND VOICE



Boyo catches a whalebone corset. It is all he has caught

all day.



        NOGOOD BOYO



Bloody funny fish!



        SECOND VOICE



Mrs Dai Bread Two gypsies up his mind's slow eye, dressed

only in a bangle.



        NOGOOD BOYO



She's wearing her nightgown. (Pleadingly) Would you like

this nice wet corset, Mrs Dai Bread Two?



        MRS DAI BREAD TWO



No, I won't!



NOGOOD BOYO



And a bite of my little apple?



        SECOND VOICE



he offers with no hope.



        FIRST VOICE



She shakes her brass nightgown, and he chases her out of

his mind; and when he comes gusting back, there in the

bloodshot centre of his eye a geisha girl grins and bows

in a kimono of ricepaper.



        NOGOOD BOYO



I want to be good Boyo, but nobody'll let me,



        FIRST VOICE



he sighs as she writhes politely. The land fades, the sea

flocks silently away; and through the warm white cloud

where he lies, silky, tingling, uneasy Eastern music

undoes him in a Japanese minute.



        SECOND VOICE



The afternoon buzzes like lazy bees round the flowers

round Mae Rose Cottage. Nearly asleep in the field of

nannygoats who hum and gently butt the sun, she blows love

on a puffball.



        MAE ROSE COTTAGE (Lazily)



He loves me

He loves me not

He loves me

He loves me not

He loves me!--the dirty old fool.



        SECOND VOICE



Lazy she lies alone in clover and sweet-grass, seventeen

and never been sweet in the grass ho ho.



        FIRST VOICE



The Reverend Eli Jenkins inky in his cool front parlour or

poem-room tells only the truth in his Lifework--the

Population, Main Industry, Shipping, History, Topography,

Flora and Fauna of the town he worships in--the White Book

of Llaregyb. Portraits of famous bards and preachers, all

fur and wool from the squint to the kneecaps, hang over

him heavy as sheep, next to faint lady watercolours of

pale green Milk Wood like a lettuce salad dying. His

mother, propped against a pot in a palm, with her

wedding-ring waist and bust like a black-clothed

dining-table suffers in her stays.



        REV. ELI JENKINS



Oh angels be careful there with your knives and forks,



        FIRST VOICE



he prays. There is no known likeness of his father Esau,

who, undogcollared because of his little weakness, was

scythed to the bone one harvest by mistake when sleeping

with his weakness in the corn. He lost all ambition and

died, with one leg.



        REV. ELI JENKINS



Poor Dad,



        SECOND VOICE



grieves the Reverend Eli,



        REV. ELI JENKINS



to die of drink and agriculture.



SECOND VOICE



Farmer Watkins in Salt Lake Farm hates his cattle on the

hill as he ho's them in to milking.



        UTAH WATKINS (In a fury)



Damn you, you damned dairies!



        SECOND VOICE



A cow kisses him.



        UTAH WATKINS



Bite her to death!



        SECOND VOICE



he shouts to his deaf dog who smiles and licks his hands.



UTAH WATKINS



Gore him, sit on him, Daisy!



        SECOND VOICE



he bawls to the cow who barbed him with her tongue, and

she moos gentle words as he raves and dances among his

summerbreathed slaves walking delicately to the farm. The

coming of the end of the Spring day is already reflected

in the lakes of their great eyes. Bessie Bighead greets

them by the names she gave them when they were maidens.



        BESSIE BIGHEAD



Peg, Meg, Buttercup, Moll,

Fan from the Castle,

Theodosia and Daisy.



        SECOND VOICE



They bow their heads.



        FIRST VOICE



Look up Bessie Bighead in the White Book of Llaregyb and

you will find the few haggard rags and the one poor

glittering thread of her history laid out in pages there

with as much love and care as the lock of hair of a first

lost love. Conceived in Milk Wood, born in a barn, wrapped

in paper, left on a doorstep, bigheaded and bass-voiced

she grew in the dark until long-dead Gomer Owen kissed her

when she wasn't looking because he was dared. Now in the

light she'll work, sing, milk, say the cows' sweet names

and sleep until the night sucks out her soul and spits it

into the sky. In her life-long low light, holily Bessie

milks the fond lake-eyed cows as dusk showers slowly down

over byre, sea and town.



Utah Watkins curses through the farmyard on a carthorse.



        UTAH WATKINS



Gallop, you bleeding cripple!



        FIRST VOICE



and the huge horse neighs softly as though he had given it

a lump of sugar.



Now the town is disk. Each cobble, donkey, goose and

gooseberry street is a thoroughfare of dusk; and dusk and

ceremonial dust, and- night's first darkening snow, and

the sleep of birds, drift under and through the live dusk

of this place of love. Llaregyb is the capital of dusk.



Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, at the first drop of the

dusk-shower, seals all her sea-view doors, draws the

germ-free blinds, sits, erect as a dry dream on a

high-backed hygienic chair and wills herself to cold,

quick sleep. At once, at twice, Mr Ogmore and Mr

Pritchard, who all dead day long have been gossiping like

ghosts in the woodshed, planning the loveless destruction

of their glass widow, reluctantly sigh and sidle into her

clean house.



        MR PRITCHARD



You first, Mr Ogmore.



        MR OGMORE



After you, Mr Pritchard.



        MR PRITCHARD



No, no, Mr Ogmore. You widowed her first.



        FIRST VOICE



And in through the keyhole, with tears where their eyes

once were, they ooze and grumble.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



Husbands,



        FIRST VOICE



she says in her sleep. There is acid love in her voice for

one of the two shambling phantoms. Mr Ogmore hopes that it

is not for him. So does Mr Pritchard.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



I love you both.



        MR OGMORE (With terror)



Oh, Mrs Ogmore.



        MR PRITCHARD (With horror)



Oh, Mrs Pritchard.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD



Soon it will be time to go to bed. Tell me your tasks in

order.



        MR OGMORE AND MR PRITCHARD



We must take our pyjamas from the drawer marked pyjamas.



        MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD (Coldly)



And then you must take them off.



        SECOND VOICE



Down in the dusking town, Mae Rose Cottage, still lying in

clover, listens to the nannygoats chew, draws circles of

lipstick round her nipples.



        MAE ROSE COTTAGE



I'm fast. I'm a bad lot. God will strike me dead. I'm

seventeen. I'll go to hell,



        SECOND VOICE



she tells the goats.



        MAE ROSE COTTAGE



You just wait. I'll sin till I blow up!



        SECOND VOICE



She lies deep, waiting for the worst to happen; the goats

champ and sneer.



        FIRST VOICE



And at the doorway of Bethesda House, the Reverend Jenkins

recites to Llaregyb Hill his sunset poem.



        REV. ELI JENKINS



Every morning when I wake,

Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,

O please to keep Thy lovely eye

On all poor creatures born to die



And every evening at sun-down

I ask a blessing on the town,

For whether we last the night or no

I'm sure is always touch-and-go.



We are not wholly bad or good

Who live our lives under Milk Wood,

And Thou, I know, wilt be the first

To see our best side, not our worst.



O let us see another day!

Bless us all this night, I pray,

And to the sun we all will bow

And say, good-bye--but just for now!



        FIRST VOICE



Jack Black prepares once more to meet his Satan in the

Wood. He grinds his night-teeth, closes his eyes, climbs

into his religious trousers, their flies sewn up with

cobbler's thread, and pads out, torched and bibled,

grimly, joyfully, into the already sinning dusk.



        JACK BLACK



Off to Gomorrah!



        SECOND VOICE



And Lily Smalls is up to Nogood Boyo in the wash-house.



        FIRST VOICE



And Cherry Owen, sober as Sunday as he is every day of the

week, goes off happy as Saturday to get drunk as a deacon

as he does every night.



        CHERRY OWEN



I always say she's got two husbands,



        FIRST VOICE



says Cherry Owen,



        CHERRY OWEN



one drunk and one sober.



        FIRST VOICE



And Mrs Cherry simply says



        MRS CHERRY OWEN



And aren't I a lucky woman? Because I love them both.



        SINBAD



Evening, Cherry.



        CHERRY OWEN



Evening, Sinbad.



        SINBAD



What'll you have?



        CHERRY OWEN



Too much.



        SINBAD



The Sailors Arms is always open...



        FIRST VOICE



Sinbad suffers to himself, heartbroken,



        SINBAD



...oh, Gossamer, open yours!



        FIRST VOICE



Dusk is drowned for ever until to-morrow, It is all at

once night now, The windy town is a hill of windows, and

from the larrupped waves the lights of the lamps in the

windows call back the day and the dead that have run away

to sea. All over the calling dark, babies and old men are

bribed and lullabied to sleep.



        FIRST WOMAN'S VOICE



Hushabye, baby, the sandman is coming...



        SECOND WOMAN'S VOICE (Singing)



Rockabye, grandpa, in the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock,

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,

Down will come grandpa, whiskers and all.



        FIRST VOICE



Or their daughters cover up the old unwinking men like

parrots, and in their little dark in the lit and bustling

young kitchen corners, all night long they watch,

beady-eyed, the long night through in case death catches

them asleep.



        SECOND VOICE



Unmarried girls, alone in their privately bridal bedrooms,

powder and curl for the Dance of the World.



                                      [Accordion music: dim



They make, in front of their looking-glasses, haughty or

come-hithering faces for the young men in the street

outside, at the lamplit leaning corners, who wait in the

all-at-once wind to wolve and whistle.



                 [Accordion music louder, then fading under



        FIRST VOICE



The drinkers in the Sailors Arms drink to the failure of

the dance.



        A DRINKER



Down with the waltzing and the skipping.



        CHERRY OWEN



Dancing isn't natural,



        FIRST VOICE



righteously says Cherry Owen who has just downed seventeen

pints of flat, warm, thin, Welsh, bitter beer.



        SECOND VOICE



A farmer's lantern glimmers, a spark on Llaregyb hillside.



                        [Accordion music fades into silence



        VOICE FIRST



Llaregyb Hill, writes the Reverend Jenkins in his poem-room,



        REV. ELI JENKINS



Llaregyb Hill, that mystic tumulus, the memorial of

peoples that dwelt in the region of Llaregyb before the

Celts left the Land of Summer and where the old wizards

made themselves a wife out of flowers.



        SECOND VOICE



Mr Waldo, in his corner of the Sailors Arms, sings:



        MR WALDO



In Pembroke City when I was young

I lived by the Castle Keep

Sixpence a week was my wages

For working for the chimbley-sweep.

Six cold pennies he

gave me Not a farthing more or less

And all the fare I could afford

Was parsnip gin and watercress.

I did not need a knife and fork

Or a bib up to my chin

To dine on a dish of watercress

And a jug of parsnip gin.

Did you ever hear a growing boy

To live so cruel cheap

On grub that has no flesh and bones

And liquor that makes you weep?

Sweep sweep chimbley sweep,

I wept through Pembroke City

Poor and barefoot in the snow

Till a kind young woman took pity.

Poor little chimbley sweep she said

Black as the ace of spades

O nobody's swept my chimbley

Since my husband went his ways

Come and sweep my chimbley

Come and sweep my chimbley

She sighed to me with a blush

Come and sweep my chimbley

Come and sweep my chimbley

Bring along your chimbley brush!



        FIRST VOICE



Blind Captain Cat climbs into his bunk. Like a cat, he

sees in the dark. Through the voyages of his tears he

sails to see the dead.



        CAPTAIN CAT



Dancing Williams!



        FIRST DROWNED



Still dancing.



        CAPTAIN CAT



Jonah Jarvis



        THIRD DROWNED



Still.



        FIRST DROWNED



Curly Bevan's skull.



        ROSIE PROBERT



Rosie, with God. She has forgotten dying.



        FIRST VOICE



The dead come out in their Sunday best.



        SECOND VOICE



Listen to the night breaking.



        FIRST VOICE



Organ Morgan goes to chapel to play the organ. He sees

Bach lying on a tombstone.



        ORGAN MORGAN



Johann Sebastian!



        CHERRY OWEN (Drunkenly)



Who?



        ORGAN MORGAN



Johann Sebastian mighty Bach. Oh, Bach Bach



        CHERRY OWEN



To hell with you,



        FIRST VOICE



says Cherry Owen who is resting on the tombstone on his

way home.



Mr Mog Edwards and Miss Myfanwy Price happily apart from

one another at the top and the sea end of the town write

their everynight letters of love and desire. In the warm

White Book of Llaregyb you will find the little maps of

the islands of their contentment.



        MYFANWY PRICE



Oh, my Mog, I am yours for ever.



        FIRST VOICE



And she looks around with pleasure at her own neat

neverdull room which Mr Mog Edwards will never enter.



        MOG EDWARDS



Come to my arms, Myfanwy.



        FIRST VOICE



And he hugs his lovely money to his own heart.



And Mr Waldo drunk in the dusky wood hugs his lovely Polly

Garter under the eyes and rattling tongues of the

neighbours and the birds, and he does not care. He smacks

his live red lips.



But it is not his name that Polly Garter whispers as she

lies under the oak and loves him back. Six feet deep that

name sings in the cold earth.



POLLY GARTER (Sings)



But I always think as we tumble into bed

Of little Willy Wee who is dead, dead, dead.



        FIRST VOICE



The thin night darkens. A breeze from the creased water

sighs the streets close under Milk waking Wood. The Wood,

whose every tree-foot's cloven in the black glad sight of

the hunters of lovers, that is a God-built garden to Mary

Ann Sailors who knows there is Heaven on earth and the

chosen people of His kind fire in Llaregyb's land, that is

the fairday farmhands' wantoning ignorant chapel of

bridesbeds, and, to the Reverend Eli Jenkins, a greenleaved

sermon on the innocence of men, the suddenly wind-shaken

wood springs awake for the second dark time this one

Spring day.

THE END

This site is full of FREE ebooks - Project Gutenberg Australia