Portrait of Dylan Thomas
I begin with you, ‘boily boy’, boyhood hero,
Self-acclaimed ‘Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive’,
Tomb-rooting, womb-raiding, welshing boyo
Who knew bugger all Welsh, yet grew to give
Your tongue the mother of all hidings with
Bardic, bawdy hwyl and yawp, syntactical high jinks.
Between words it was beers at Brown’s with the wife
Until America inveigled the Poet Inc.
You did the rest with a biblical best eighteen whisky drinks.
Portrait of Edna St Vincent Millay
Her head is turned from the camera, and she looks
Somewhat winsome among the magnolia blossom:
Like a mischievous minx whose just swallowed two figs;
A girl who becomes – and flaunts – it; a woman
Who ‘will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one’.
Oh, she is loved; but there are new kids on the block.
(Even Edmund Wilson misses her ‘old imperial line’).
She shoots up, she drinks, she sways, she falls and breaks her neck –
The ghostly rain and ‘quiet pain’ slowly drowning all memory and sex.
