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

I, in a wind of fire, from green Adam’s cradle,
No man more magical, clawed out the crocodile.

Give over, lovers, locking, and the seawax struggle,
Love like a mist or fire through the bed of eels.

Dazzle this face of voices on the moon-turned table,

Hear they the salt glass breakers and the tongues of burial.

A quarrel of weather and trees in the windy spiral.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,

…
Hence the speakers, hesitation, court between an awareness of the need to advance, and the knowledge that childhood is not quite over.

The answer given is conventional; to answer the quickening pulse of desire by speeding up his ‘actions’ and ‘defying time’, so advancing more rapidly to maturity. Yet the terms in which this is presented – suggestive of Einstein’s description of the way the universe appears as one approaches the speed of light – suggests relativity, not certainty;
…

I have heard many years of telling,
And many years should see some change.

The ball I threw while playing in the park
Has not yet reached the ground.

I have been taught to reason by the heart,
But heart, like head, leads helplessly;
I have been taught to reason by the pulse,
And, when it quickens, alter the actions’ pace