Here is an example of poetry as a celebration of language: ‘Poem in October’* by Dylan Thomas. I will only quote a few lines so that I do not break any rights rules:
‘My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.’
Oh and here is memory:
‘….
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight ….’
I love the image of walking abroad in the shower of one’s days: the walking through time, ageing, each day a raindrop that falls as far as the cloud will shed it–think of raindrops on people’s cheeks, raindrops on wooden houses, on the grass. There is such a physical connection between the soul of the speaker and the soul of nature here, all embodied in this language that takes you flying. And then, I wonder, as I have young children, what’s it like for them to walk ‘through the parables/ of sunlight’? What a blessing this poem is!
*(lines quoted from the Norton Anthology of English lit.*Vol. F)
