Back in the 1950s, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote a play called “Under Milkwood, a Play for Voices” for the radio. In a sense, it was rather like the stage play “Our Town,” written by the American playwright Thorton Wilder.
In the opening monologue to Thomas’ play, the narrator speaks these lines:
… You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing …
And you alone can hear the invisible starfall …
Listen it is night moving in the streets …
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now. Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets …
Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers …From where you are, you can hear their dreams…”
Poetry. Written to be heard.
Do you hear the sounds, both near and far? A baby sleeping. Distant thunder. Music coming from another room. We hear the invisible. We just need to … listen … to make sense of it.
Language is like that. A Play for Voices. Waves in time. Welsh waves, Atlantic waves. Mediterranean waves … Voice waves. Listen … just for a moment … You’ve got all it takes … and in fact, all the time in the world.
