Mrs Calloway’s Reviews > [(The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas)] [ By (author) Dylan Thomas, Edited by John Goodby ] [October, 2014] > Status Update

All things are known: the stars’ advice
Calls some content to travel with the winds,
Though what the stars ask as they round
Time upon time the towers of the skies
Is heard but little till the stars go out.
I hear content, and ‘Be content’
Ring like a handbell through the corridors,
And ‘Know no answer’, and I know
No answer to the children’s cry

And green, sneers not at the old sky.
No man believes who does not wonder why.

For he has found his soul in loneliness,
Now he is one with many, one with all,
Fire and Jordan and the sad canal.
Now he has heard and read the happy word.
Still, in his hut, he broods among his birds.

The moon peers down the valley like a saint.

The hermit’s huts, and talked to ancient men.
Out of the noise into quiet I ran.

No God comes from my evil or my good.

And thus, between the seasons, heard him cry:
Where, what’s my God? I have been mad, am mad,
Have searched for shells and signs on the seashore,
Stuck straw and seven stars upon my hair,
And leant on stiles and on the golden bar,
I have ridden on gutter dung and cloud.

Within his head revolved a little world

Across the sun was spread a crazy smile.
The moon leered down the valley like a fool.

My senses see.
Speak, then, o body, shout aloud,
And break my only mind from chains
To go where ploughing’s ended.