Dylan Thomas has been a favorite writer of mine for many years. I remember a group of us “performing” Under Milk Wood one night in an apartment near the pier in Hermosa Beach. Ah memories. But anyway, here are some of my favorite lines from the play for voices:
“Quiet…like a mouse with gloves…”
“I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.”
“And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.”
“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.”
“Nearly asleep in the field of nannygoats who hum and gently butt the sun…”
“Night…starless and bible-black…invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles…”
“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…”
“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.”
“…while the drugged, bedraggled hens at the back door whimper and snivel for the lickerish bog-black tea.”
(Another in a series of language virtuosities, with me as the emcee. I hope you enjoyed it.)