Under Milk Wood (2014) - full transcript

An unique one-off collage of famous voices and faces, inter-cut with evocative imagery inspired by the play of the same name. Broadcast to celebrate the centenary year of the birth of the poet Dylan Thomas.

To begin at the beginning...

OK.

OK. Stand by.

Yeah, looking forward or just
start looking at the camera?

OK.

We're up to speed.
Nice and quiet, please.

OK, stand by, studio. Five, four,

three...

To begin at the beginning...

It is spring.

Moonless night



in the small town.

Starless and bible-black.

The cobblestreets silent

and the hunched,
courters'-and-rabbits' wood

limping invisible
down to the sloeblack...

...slow, black, crowblack,
fishingboat-bobbing sea.

The houses are blind as moles,

though moles see fine to-night
in the snouting, velvet dingles.

Or blind as Captain Cat

there in the muffled middle

by the pump and the town clock.

The shops in mourning,

the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds.

And all the people
of the lulled and dumbfound town



are sleeping now.

(Hush, the babies are sleeping.)

The farmers, the fishers,

the tradesmen and pensioners,

cobbler, schoolteacher,

postman and publican,

the undertaker
and the fancy woman,

drunkard, dressmaker,

preacher, policeman,

the webfoot cocklewomen

and the tidy wives.

You can hear the dew falling...

...and the hushed town... breathing.

Only your eyes are unclosed

to see the black and folded town

fast, and slow, asleep.

And you alone

can hear the invisible starfall,

the darkest-beforedawn

minutely dewgrazed stir

of the black, dab-filled sea

where the Arethusa, the Curlew
and the Skylark,

Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover,

the Cormorant,
and the Star of Wales

tilt and ride.

Listen.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

It is night moving in the streets,

the processional
salt slow musical wind

in Coronation Street
and Cockle Row...

...it is the grass
growing on Llareggub Hill,

dewfall,

starfall...

...the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.

Look.

It is night,

dumbly, royally winding

through the Coronation cherry trees,

going through the graveyard
of Bethesda

with winds gloved and folded,

and dew doffed -
tumbling by the Sailors Arms.

Time passes.

Listen.

Time passes.

Come closer now.

Come closer now.

In the slow deep salt

and silent black, bandaged night.

Only you can see,

in the blinded bedrooms,

the combs and petticoats
over the chairs,

the jugs and basins,

the glasses of teeth,

"Thou Shalt Not" on the wall,

and the yellowing dickybird-watching
pictures of the dead.

Only you can hear and see,

behind the eyes of the sleepers,

the movements and countries

and mazes and colours

and dismays and rainbows

and tunes and wishes

and flight and fall

and despairs
and big seas of their dreams.

From where you are,

you can hear their dreams.

Captain Cat, the retired
blind sea captain,

asleep in his bunk

in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled,

shipshape best cabin
of Schooner House

dreams of...

Never such seas as any
that swamped the decks

of his SS Kidwelly

bellying over the bedclothes

and jellyfish-slippery
sucking him down salt deep

into the Davy dark

where the fish come biting out
and nibble him down to his wishbone,

and the long drowned
nuzzle up to him.

Remember me, Captain?

You're Dancing Williams!
I lost my step in Nantucket.

Do you see me, Captain?

The white bone talking?

I'm Tom-Fred the donkeyman.

We shared the same girl once...

her name was Mrs Probert.

Rosie Probert, 33 Duck Lane.

Come on up, boys, I'm dead.

Hold me, Captain, I'm Jonah Jarvis,

come to a bad end, very enjoyable.

This skull at your earhole is...

Curly Bevan.

Tell my auntie it was me
who pawned the ormolu clock.

Aye, aye, Curly.

Tell my missus, no, I never.

I never done
what she said, I never.

Yes, they did.
How's it above?

Is there rum and lavabread?

Bosoms and robins?
Concertinas?

Ebenezer's bell?
Fighting and onions?

And sparrows and daisies?

Tiddlers in a jamjar?

Buttermilk and whippets?

Rock-a-bye-baby?
Washing on the line?

And old girls in the snug?

How's the tenors in Dowlais?

Who milks the cows in Maesgwyn?

When she smiles, is there dimples?

What's the smell of parsley?

Oh, my dead dears!

From where you are, you can hear,

in Cockle Row in the spring,
moonless night,

Miss Price,
dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper,

dream of... Her lover,
tall as the town clock tower,

Samsonsyrup-gold-maned,
whacking thighed and piping hot,

thunderbolt-bass'd
and barnacle-breasted,

flailing up the cockles
with his eyes like blowlamps

and scooping low

over her lonely, loving

hotwaterbottled body.

Myfanwy Price!

Mr Mog Edwards!

I am a draper mad with love.

I love you more than all
the flannelette and calico,

candlewick, dimity,
crash and merino,

tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin,

poplin, ticking and twill in the
whole Cloth Hall of the world.

I have come to take you away
to my Emporium on the hill,

where the change hums on wires.

Throw away your little bedsocks
and your Welsh wool knitted jacket.

I will warm the sheets
like an electric toaster.

I will lie by your side
like the Sunday roast.

I will knit you a wallet
of forget-me-not blue,

for the money to be comfy.

I will warm your heart by the fire

so you can slip it in under your
vest when the shop is closed.

Myfanwy, Myfanwy,

before the mice gnaw at
your bottom drawer will you say...

Yes, Mog.

Yes, Mog, yes, yes, yes.

And all the bells
of the tills of the town

shall ring for our wedding.

Evans the Death, the undertaker

laughs high and aloud in his sleep

and curls up his toes as he sees,

upon waking 50 years ago,

snow lie deep on the goosefield
behind the sleeping house.

And he runs out into the field

where his mother is making
Welshcakes in the snow

and steals a fistful of snowflakes
and currants

and climbs back to bed to eat them

cold and sweet under the warm,
white clothes

while his mother dances
in the snow kitchen

crying out for her lost currants.

And in the little pink-eyed cottage
next to the undertaker's,

lie, alone, the 17 snoring
gentle stone of Mr Waldo,

rabbitcatcher, barber, herbalist,

catdoctor, quack,

his fat, pink hands, palm up,
over the edge of the patchwork quilt,

his black boots neat and tidy
in the washing basin,

his bowler on a nail above the bed,

a milk stout and a slice of cold
bread pudding under the pillow.

And, dripping
in the dark, he dreams of...

Waldo! Waldo!

What'll the neighbours say,
what'll the neighbours...?

Poor Mrs Waldo.

What she puts up with.

Never should've married.
If she didn't have to.

Same as her mother.
There's a husband for you.

Bad as his father.
You know where he ended.

Up in the asylum. Crying for his ma.

Every Sunday. He hadn't got a leg.

And carrying on.
With that Mrs Beetie Morris.

Up in the quarry. You seen her baby?

It's got his nose.
Oh, it makes my heart bleed.

What he'll do for drink.
He sold the pianola.

And her sewing machine.

Falling in the gutter.
Talking to the lamp post.

Using language.
Singing in the W.

Poor Mrs Waldo.

Waldo.

Waldo! Yes?

What'll the neighbours say,
what'll the neighbours...?

Black as a chimbley.
Ringing doorbells.

Breaking windows.
Making mudpies.

Stealing currants.
Chalking words.

Saw him in the bushes.
Playing moochins.

Send him to bed without any supper.
Give him senapods and lock him in the dark.

Off to the reformatory.
Off to the reformatory!

Learn him with a slipper
on his BTM.

Now, in her iceberg-white,

holily laundered
crinoline nightgown,

under virtuous polar sheets,

in her spruced and scoured
dust-defying bedroom

in trig and trim Bay View,

a house for paying guests,

at the top of the town,

Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard,

widow, twice,

of Mr Ogmore, linoleum, retired,

and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker,

who, maddened by besoming,
swabbing and scrubbing,

the voice of the vacuum-cleaner
and the fume of polish,

ironically swallowed disinfectant,

fidgets in her rinsed sleep,

wakes in a dream,

and nudges in the ribs
dead Mr Ogmore,

dead Mr Pritchard,

ghostly on either side.

Mr Ogmore, Mr Pritchard,

it's time to inhale your balsam.

Oh, Mrs Ogmore!

Oh, Mrs Pritchard!

Soon it will be time to get up.

Tell me your tasks, in order.

I must put my pyjamas in
the drawer marked "pyjamas".

I must take my cold bath

which is good for me.

I must wear my flannel band
to ward off sciatica.

I must dress behind the curtain
and put on my apron.

I must blow my nose...

In the garden, if you please.

...in a piece of tissue-paper
which I afterwards burn.

I must take my salts
which are nature's friend.

I must boil the drinking water
because of germs.

I must make my herb tea

which is free from tannin.

And have a charcoal biscuit

which is good for me.

I may smoke one pipe
of asthma mixture...

In the woodshed, if you please.

And dust the parlour
and spray the canary.

I must put on rubber gloves
and search the peke for fleas.

I must dust the blinds
and then I must raise them.

And before you let the sun in,

mind it wipes its shoes.

Mrs Rose Cottage's eldest, Mae,

peels off her pink-and-white skin

in a furnace in a tower

in a cave in a waterfall in a wood

and waits there raw as an onion

for Mr Right to leap up

the burning tall hollow
splashes of leaves

like a brilliantined trout.

Call me Dolores

like they do in the stories.

And the Inspectors of Cruelty

fly down into
Mrs Butcher Beynon's dream

to persecute
Mr Beynon for selling owl meat,

dogs' eyes, manchop.

Mr Beynon,
in butcher's bloodied apron,

springheels down Coronation Street,

a finger, not his own, in his mouth.

Straight-faced in his cunning sleep

he pulls the legs of his dreams

and hunting on pigback
shoots down the wild giblets.

And in Coronation Street,

which you alone can see,

it is so dark under
the chapel in the skies,

the Reverend Eli Jenkins,

poet, preacher,

turns in his deep towards-dawn sleep

and dreams of... Eisteddfodau.

He intricately rhymes the music
of crwth and pibgorn,

all night long

in his druid's seedy nightie

in a beer-tent black with parchs.

Mr Pugh, schoolmaster,
fathoms asleep,

pretends to be sleeping,

spies foxy round the droop
of his nightcap and...

Pssst...

...whistles up.

Murder.

Mary Ann the Sailors dreams of...

...The Garden of Eden.

She comes in her
smock-frock and clogs

away from the cool scrubbed
cobbled kitchen

with the Sunday-school pictures
on the whitewashed wall

and the farmers' almanac
hung above the settle

and the sides of bacon
on the ceiling hooks...

...and goes down
the cockleshelled paths

of that applepie kitchen garden...

...duckling under
the gyppo's clothespegs,

catching her apron
on the blackcurrant bushes,

past beanrows and onion-bed

and tomatoes ripening on the wall...

...towards the old man

playing the harmonium
in the orchard,

and sits down on the grass
at his side...

...and shells the green peas

that grow up through
the lap of her frock

that brushes the dew.

Time passes.

Listen.

Time passes.

An owl flies home past Bethesda,
to a chapel in an oak.

And the dawn inches up.

The principality of the sky
lightens now,

over our green hill...

into spring morning

larked and crowed and belling.

Stand on this hill.

This is Llareggub Hill...

...old as the hills, high,

cool, and green.

And from this small
circle of stones,

made not by druids
but by Mrs Beynon's Billy,

you can see all the town
below you

sleeping in the first of the dawn.

You can hear the love-sick
wood pigeons mooning in bed.

A dog barks in his sleep,

farmyards away.

The town ripples

like a lake in the waking haze.

Who pulls the townhall bellrope
but blind Captain Cat?

One by one, the sleepers are rung
out of sleep this one morning

as every morning.

And soon you shall see the chimneys'
slow upflying snow

as Captain Cat,
in sailor's cap and seaboots,

announces to-day with his loud
get-out-of-bed bell.

Now, woken at last by the

out-of-bed-sleepy-head-Polly-put-
the-kettle-on townhall bell,

Lily Smalls, Mrs Beynon's treasure,

comes downstairs
from a dream of royalty

who all night long went larking
with her

full of sauce in
the Milk Wood dark,

and puts the kettle on the primus
in Mrs Beynon's kitchen

and looks at herself in Mr Beynon's
shaving-glass over the sink

and sees...

Oh, there's a face!

Where you get that hair from?

Got it from a old tom cat.

Give it back then, love.

Oh, there's a perm!

Where you get that nose from, Lily?

Got it from my father, silly.

You've got it on upside down!

Oh...

there's a conk!

Look at your complexion!
Oh, no, you look.

Needs a bit of make-up.
Needs a veil!

Oh, there's glamour

Where you get that smile, Lil?

Never you mind, girl.

Nobody loves you.
That's what you think.

Who is it loves you?
Shan't tell.

Oh, come on, Lily!

Cross your heart, then?

Cross my heart.

Lily!

Yes, Mum? Where's my tea, girl?

(Where do you think?
In the cat-box?)

Coming up, Mum!

Mr Pugh,
in the schoolhouse opposite,

takes up the morning tea
to Mrs Pugh,

and whispers on the stairs...

(Here's your arsenic, dear.

(And your weedkiller biscuit.

(I've throttled your parakeet.

(I've spat in the vases.

(I've put cheese in the mouseholes.

(Here's your...)

Nice tea, dear?

Too much sugar.

You haven't tasted it yet, dear.

Too much milk, then.

Give me my glasses.

No, not my reading glasses,

I want to look out.

I want to see.

Organ Morgan at his bedroom window

playing chords on the sill
to the morning fishwife gulls

who, heckling over Donkey Street,
observe.

Me, Dai Bread,
hurrying to the bakery,

pushing in my shirt-tails,
buttoning my waistcoat,

ping goes a button.

Why can't they sew them?

No time for breakfast,

nothing FOR breakfast.

There's wives for you.

Me, Mrs Dai Bread One,

capped and shawled
and no old corset,

nice to be comfy, nice to be nice,

clogging on the cobbles
to stir up a neighbour.

Oh, Mrs Sarah,
can you spare a loaf, love?

Dai Bread forgot the bread.

Me, Mrs Dai Bread Two,

gypsied to kill

in a silky scarlet petticoat
above my knees,

dirty pretty knees.

See my body through my petticoat

brown as a berry,

high-heel shoes
with one heel missing,

tortoiseshell comb
in my bright black slinky hair,

nothing else at all
but a dab of scent,

lolling gaudy at the doorway,

tell your fortune
in the tea-leaves,

scowling at the sunshine,

lighting up my pipe.

Me, Nogood Boyo,

up to no good in the wash-house.

Me, Miss Price,
in my pretty print housecoat,

deft at the clothesline,
natty as a jenny-wren,

then pit-pat back to my egg
in its cosy,

my crisp toast-fingers,

my home-made plum and butterpat.

Me, Polly Garter,
under the washing line,

giving the breast in the garden
to my bonny new baby.

Nothing grows in our garden,
only washing.

And babies.

And where's their fathers live,
my love?

Over the hills and far away.

You're looking up at me now.

I know what you're thinking,
you poor little milky creature.

You're thinking, you're no better
than you should be, Polly,

and that's good enough for me.

Oh, isn't life a terrible thing,

thank God?

Now, frying-pans spit,

kettles and cats purr
in the kitchen.

The town smells of seaweed
and breakfast

all the way down from Bay View,

where Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard,
in smock and turban,

big-besomed to engage
the dust,

picks at her starchless bread

and sips lemon-rind tea...

To Bottom Cottage, where Mr Waldo,

in bowler and bib,

gobbles his bubble-and-squeak
and kippers

and swigs from the saucebottle.

Mary Ann Sailors

praises the Lord who made porridge.

Mr Pugh...

...remembers ground glass
as he juggles his omelette.

Mrs Pugh nags the salt-cellar.

From Beynon butchers
in Coronation Street,

the smell of fried liver sidles out

with onions on its breath.

And listen!

In the dark breakfast room
behind the shop,

Mr and Mrs Beynon,

waited upon by their treasure,

enjoy, between bites,
their every morning hullabaloo,

and Mrs Beynon slips the gristly
bits under the tasselled tablecloth

to her fat cat.

She likes the liver, Ben.

She ought to do, Bess,
it's her brother's.

Oh, do you hear that, Lily?

Yes, Mum.

We're eating pusscat.

Yes, Mum.

Oh, you cat-butcher!

It was doctored, mind.

What's that got to do with it?

Yesterday we had mole.

Oh, Lily! Lily!

Monday, otter. Tuesday, shrews.

Oh!

Go on, Mrs Beynon.
He's the biggest liar in town.

Don't you dare say that
about Mr Beynon.

Everybody knows it, Mum.

Mr Beynon never tells a lie.

Do you, Ben? No, Bess.

And now I am going out
after the corgis,

with my little cleaver.

Up the street,
in the Sailors' Arms,

Sinbad Sailors,
grandson of Mary Ann the Sailors,

draws a pint in the sunlit bar.

The ship's clock in the bar
says half past 11.

Half past 11 is opening time.

The hands of the clock
have stayed still at half past 11

for 50 years.

It's always opening time
in the Sailors' Arms.

Here's to me, Sinbad.

Nogood Boyo goes out
in the dinghy Zanzibar,

ships the oars,

drifts slowly in the dab-filled bay,

and, lying on his back
in the unbaled water,

among crabs' legs
and tangled lines,

looks up at the spring sky.

I don't know who's up there
and I don't care.

He turns his head
and looks up at Llareggub Hill,

and sees,
among green lathered trees,

the white houses
of the strewn away farms,

where farmboys whistle,

dogs shout,

cows low,

but all too far away for him,

or you, to hear.

And in the town,
the shops squeak open.

Mr Edwards,

in butterfly-collar and straw-hat
at the doorway of Manchester House,

measures, with his eye,
the dawdlers by,

for striped flannel shirts
and shrouds

and flowery blouses,

and bellows to himself,
in the darkness behind his eye.

I love Miss Price.

And, sitting at the open window
of Schooner House,

blind Captain Cat hears
all the morning of the town.

That's Willy Nilly
knocking at Bay View.

Rat-a-Tat, very soft.

The knocker's got a kid glove on.

Who's sent a litter
to Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard?

Careful now,
she swabs the front glassy.

Every step's like a bar of soap.

Mind your size twelveses.

That old Bessie would beeswax
the lawn to make the birds slip.

Morning, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.

Good morning, postman.

Here's a letter for you with stamped
and addressed envelope enclosed,

all the way from Builth Wells.

A gentleman wants to study birds

and can he have accommodation for
two weeks and a bath, vegetarian.

No. You wouldn't even know he was
in the house, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.

He'd be out in the mornings
at the bang of dawn

with his bag of breadcrumbs
and his little telescope.

And come home at all hours
covered with feathers.

I don't want persons
in my nice clean rooms

breathing all over the chairs.

Cross my heart, he won't breathe.

And putting their feet on my carpets

and sneezing on my china

and sleeping in my sheets.

He only wants a single bed,
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.

And back she goes to the kitchen,

to polish the potatoes.

Captain Cat hears Willy Nilly's feet
heavy on the distant cobbles.

One, two, three, four...

five.

He's stopping at schoolhouse.
Morning, Mrs Pugh.

Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard won't have
a gentleman in

because he'll sleep in her sheets.

Give me the parcel.

It's for Mr Pugh, Mrs Pugh.

Never you mind.

What's inside it?

A book called
Lives Of The Great Poisoners.

That's Manchester House.

Morning, Mr Edwards.
Very small news.

Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard
won't have birds in the house,

and Mr Pugh's...

(bought a book now
on how to do in Mrs Pugh.)

Have you got a letter from HER?

Miss Price loves you
with all her heart.

Smelling of lavender today.

She's down to the last
of the elderflower wine

but the quince jam's bearing up and
she's knitting roses on the doilies.

Last week she sold three jars
of boiled sweets,

pound of humbugs,

half a box of jellybabies and
six coloured photos of Llareggub.

Yours for ever. Then 21 Xs.

Oh, Willy Nilly, she's a ruby!

Here's my letter.

Put it into her hands now.

Mr Waldo hurrying
to the Sailors' Arms.

Pint of stout with an egg in it.

There's a letter for him.

It's another paternity summons,
Mr Waldo.

All the women are out this morning,
in the sun.

You can tell it's spring.

That's Mrs Dai Bread One,
walking up the street like a jelly,

every time she shakes
it's slap, slap, slap.

Who's that?

Mrs Butcher Beynon
with her pet black cat,

it follows her everywhere,
meow and all.

High heels now, in the morning, too,
Mrs Rose-Cottage's eldest,

Mae,
17 and never been kissed, ho-ho!

Going young and milking
under my window to the field

with the nanny goats,
she reminds me all the way.

Can't hear what the
girls are gabbing round the pump.

Same as ever.

Who's having a baby,
who blacked whose eye,

seen Polly Garter giving her belly
an airing, there should be a law,

seen Mrs Beynon's new mauve jumper,
it's her old grey jumper, dyed,

who's dead, who's dying,
there's a lovely day,

oh, the cost of soapflakes!

Somebody's coming.

Now the voices round the pump can
see somebody coming.

Hush, there's a hush?

You can tell by the noise
of the hush, it's Polly Garter.

Hullo, Polly, who's there?

Me, love.
That's Polly Garter.

Hullo, Polly, my love.

Can you hear the dumb goose-hiss
of the wives as they huddle

and peck or
flounce at a waddle away?

Who cuddled you when?

Which of their gandering hubbies
moaned in Milk Wood

for your naughty mothering arms
and body like a wardrobe, love?

Scrub the floors of the Welfare Hall

for the Mothers' Union Social Dance,
you're one mother won't

wriggle her roly poly bum or pat
her fat little buttery foot

in that wedding-ringed holy tonight,
though the waltzing breadwinners

snatched from the cosy smoke of the
Sailors' Arms will grizzle and mope.

Too late, cock, too late.

For the town's half over
with it's morning.

The morning's busy as bees.

There's the clip-clop of horses on
the sunhoneyed

cobbles of the humming streets,

hammering of horseshoes,
gobble quack and cackle,

tomtit twitter from the bird-ounced
boughs, braying on Donkey Down.

Bread is baking, pigs are
grunting, chop goes the butcher,

milk churns bell, tills ring,
sheep cough, dogs shout, saws sing.

Oh, the spring whinny
and morning moo

from the clog
dancing farms, the gulls' gab

and rabble on the boat bobbing river
and sea and the cockles bubbling

in the sand, scamper of sanderlings,
curlew cry, crow caw, pigeon coo,

clock strike, bull bellow, and
the ragged gabble of the beargarden

school as the women scratch
and babble in Mrs Organ Morgan's

general shop where everything
is sold - custard, buckets,

henna, rat-traps, shrimp nets,
sugar, stamps, confetti,

paraffin, hatchets, whistles.

Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.
La di da.

Got a man in Builth Wells.

And he got a little telescope
to look at birds.

Willy Nilly said...

Remember her first husband?
He didn't need a telescope.

He looked at them
undressing through the keyhole.

And he used to shout "Tally-ho".

But Mr Ogmore was a proper
gentleman.

Even though he hanged his collie.

Seen Mrs Butcher Beynon?

She said Butcher Beynon
put dogs in the mincer.

Go on! He's puling her leg.

Now don't you dare tell her that,
there's a dear.

Or she'll think he's trying to
pull it off and eat it!

There's a nasty lot live here
when you come to think.

Look at that Nogood Boyo now.

Too lazy to wipe his snout.

And going out fishing every day,

and all he ever brought back
was a Mrs Samuels.

Been in the water a week.

And look at Ocky Milkman's wife
that nobody's ever seen.

He keeps her in the cupboard
with the empties!

And think of Dai Bread
with two wives.

One for the daytime,
one for the night.

Men are brutes on the quiet.

And in Willy Nilly the Postman's

dark and sizzling damp tea-coated
misty pygmy kitchen where the

spittingcat kettles throb and hop
on the range, Mrs Willy Nilly

steams open Mr Mog Edwards'
letter to Miss Myfanwy Price

and reads it aloud to Willy Nilly by
the squint of the Spring sun through

the one sealed window running with
tears, while the drugged,

bedraggled hens at the back
door whimper

and snivel for the lickerish
bog-black tea.

Beloved Mafanwy Price,

my bride in heaven.

I love you until death do us part

and then we shall be
together for ever and ever.

A new parcel of ribbons has
come from Carmarthen today,

all the colours in the rainbow.

I wish I could tie a ribbon in your
hair, a white one, but it cannot be.

I dreamed last night you were all
dripping wet and you

sat on my lap as the Reverend
Jenkins went down the street.

"I see you've got a mermaid in your
lap," he said and he lifted his hat.

He's a proper Christian.
Not like Cherry Owen who said,

"You should have thrown her back!"
he said. Business is very poorly.

Poly Garter bought
two garters with roses

but she never got stockings
so what is the use, I say?

Mr Waldo tried to sell me
a woman's nightie, outsize, he said

he found it and we know where.

I sold a packet of pins to
Tom the Sailors to pick his teeth.

If this goes on I shall be
in a workhouse.

My heart is in your bosom
and yours is in mine.

God be with you always Myfanwy Price
and keep you lovely for me

in His Heavenly Mansion.

I must stop now and remain,
Your Eternal, Mog Edwards.

And then a little message with
a rubber stamp, "Shop at Mog's"!

Mrs Dai Bread One

and Mrs Dai Bread Two are sitting
outside their house in

Donkey Lane, one darkly one plumply
blooming in the quick, dewy sun.

Mrs Dai Bread Two is looking into a
crystal ball which she holds in the

lap of her dirty yellow petticoat,
hard against her hard dark thighs.

Cross my palm with silver.
Out of our housekeeping money.

Aah! What do you see, lovey?

I see a feather bed.
With three pillows on it.

And a text above the bed.

I can't read what it says,
there's great clouds blowing.

Ooh, now they've blown away.

"God is Love", the text says.

That's our bed.

And now it's vanished.

The sun spinning like a top.

Who's this coming out of the sun?

It's a hairy little man
with big pink lips,

he's got a wall eye.

It's Dai, it's Dai Bread!
Ssh! The feather bed's floating back.

The little man's
taking his boots off.

He's pulling his shirt
over his head.

He's beating his chest with
his fists. He's climbing into bed.

Go on, go on.

There's two women in bed.

He looks at them both,
with his head cocked on one side.

He's whistling through his teeth.

Now he grips his little arms around
one of the women.

Which one, which one?

I can't see any more.

There's great clouds blowing again.

Ach, the mean old clouds!

The morning is all singing.

The Reverend Eli Jenkins,
busy on his morning calls,

stops outside the Welfare Hall to
hear Polly Garter as

she scrubs the floors for the
Mothers' Union Dance to-night.

♪ ..Was Tom

♪ He was strong as a bear
and two yards long

♪ I loved a man
whose name was Dick

♪ He was big as a barrel
and three feet thick

♪ And I loved a man
whose name was Harry

♪ Six feet tall
and sweet as a cherry

♪ But the one I loved best
awake or asleep

♪ Was little Willy Wee
and he's six feet deep

♪ Oh, Tom, Dick and Harry
were three fine men

♪ And I'll never have
such loving again

♪ But little Willy Wee
who took me on his knee

♪ Little Willy Wee
was the man for me

♪ Now, men from every parish round

♪ Run after me and
roll me on the ground

♪ But whenever I love
another man back

♪ Johnnie from the Hill or
Sailing Jack

♪ I always think as they
do what they please

♪ Of Tom, Dick and Harry
who were tall as trees

♪ And most I think
when I'm by their side

♪ Of little Willy Wee
who downed and died. ♪

Praise the Lord!
We are a musical nation.

In the blind-drawn dark
dining-room of schoolhouse, dusty

and echoing as a
dining-room in a vault,

Mr and Mrs Pugh are silent over
cold grey cottage pie.

Mr Pugh reads,
as he forks the shroud meat in,

from Lives Of The Great Poisoners.

He has bound a plain brown-paper
cover round the book.

Slyly, between slow mouthfuls,

he sidespies up at Mrs Pugh,

poisons her with his eye,
then goes on reading.

He underlines certain passages
and smiles in secret.

Persons with manners
do not read at table.

Says Mrs Pugh.

She swallows a digestive
tablet as big as a horse-pill,

washing it down with
clouded peasoup water.

Some persons were brought up
in pigsties.

Pigs don't read at table, dear.

Bitterly she flicks
dust from the broken cruet.

It settles on the pie in
a thin gnat-rain.

Pigs can't read, my dear.

I know one who can.

Alone in the hissing
laboratory of his wishes,

Mr Pugh minces among bad vats and
jeroboams, tiptoes through spinneys

of murdering herbs, agony dancing in
his crucibles, and mixes especially

for Mrs Pugh a venomous porridge

unknown to toxicologists
which will scald

and viper through her until her ears
fall off like figs, her toes grow

big and black as balloons, and steam
comes screaming out of her navel.

You know best, dear.

Says Mr Pugh and quick as a flash
he ducks her in rat soup.

What's that book by
your trough, Mr Pugh?

It's a theological work, my dear.
Lives Of The Great Saints.

I saw you talking to a saint this
morning. Saint Polly Garter.

She was martyred again last night.

♪ But I always think as
we tumble into bed

♪ Of little Willy Wee who
is dead, dead, dead... ♪

The sunny slow lulling
afternoon yawns

and moons through the dozy town.

The sea lolls, laps and idles in,
with fishes sleeping in its lap.

The meadows still as Sunday,
the shut-eye tasselled bulls,

the goat-and-daisy dingles,
nap happy and lazy.

The dumb duck-ponds snooze. Clouds
sag and pillow on Llareggub Hill.

Persons with manners...

Snaps Mrs cold Pugh...

...do not nod at table.

Mr Pugh cringes awake.

He puts on a soft-soaping smile,

it is sad and grey under his
nicotine-eggyellow weeping walrus

Victorian moustache worn thick and
long in memory of Doctor Crippen.

You should wait
until you retire to your sty...

Says Mrs Pugh, sweet as a razor.

His fawning measly
quarter-smile freezes.

Sly and silent, he foxes
into his chemist's den and there,

in a hiss
and prussic circle of cauldrons

and phials brimful with pox and the
Black Death, cooks up a fricassee

of deadly nightshade, nicotine, hot
frog, cyanide and bat-spit for his

needling stalactite hag and bednag
of a pokerbacked nutcracker wife.

I beg your pardon, my dear.

He murmurs, with a wheedle.

Captain Cat,
at his window thrown wide to the sun

and the clippered seas
he sailed long ago

when his eyes were blue and bright,
slumbers and voyages,

ear-ringed and rolling,
"I Love You, Rosie Probert"

tattooed on his belly,

he brawls with broken bottles

in the fug and babble of the dark
dock bars,

roves with a herd of short and
good-time cows in every naughty port

and twines and souses with the
drowned and blowzy-breasted dead.

He weeps as he sleeps and sails,

and the tears
run down his grog-blossomed nose.

One voice of all he remembers most
dearly as his dream buckets down.

Lazy early Rosie with the flaxen
thatch, whom he shared with Tom-Fred

the donkeyman and many another
seaman, clearly and near to him,

speaks from the bedroom of her dust.

In that gulf and haven, fleets
by the dozen have anchored for the

little heaven of the night, but she
speaks to Captain napping Cat alone.

Mrs Probert...

From Duck Lane, Jack.
Quack twice and ask for Rosie.

...is the one love of his sea-life
that was sardined with women.

What seas did you see

Tom Cat, Tom Cat

In your sailoring days?

What sea beasts were
In the wavery green

When you were my master?

I'll tell you the truth.

Seas barking like seals

Blue seas and green

Seas covered with eels

And mermen and whales.

What seas did you sail

Old whaler when

On the blubbery waves

Between Frisco and Wales

You were my bosun?

As true as I'm here

Dear you Tom Cat's tart

You landlubber Rosie

You cosy love

My easy as easy

My true sweetheart

Seas green as a bean

Seas gliding with swans

In the seal-barking moon.

What seas were rocking

My little deck hand

My favourite husband

In your seaboots and hunger

My duck my whaler

My honey my daddy

My pretty sugar sailor

With my name on your belly

When you were a boy

Long long ago?

I'll tell you no lies.

The only sea I saw

Was the seesaw sea

With you riding on it.

Lie down, lie easy.

Let me shipwreck in your thighs.

Knock twice, Jack

At the door of my grave

And ask for Rosie.

Rosie Probert.

Remember her.

She is forgetting.

The earth which filled her mouth

Is vanishing from her.

Remember me.

I have forgotten you.

I am going into the darkness
of the darkness for ever.

I have forgotten that
I was ever born.

Now the town is dusk.

Each cobble, donkey, goose
and gooseberry street

Is a thoroughfare of dusk

And dusk and ceremonial dust

And night's first darkening snow

And the sleep of birds

Drift under and through the live dusk
of this place of love.

Llareggub is the capital of dusk.

Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, at the first
drop of the dusk-shower,

seals all her Sea-View doors,

draws the germ-free blinds,

sits, erect as a dry dream
on a high-backed hygienic chair

and wills herself
to cold, quick sleep.

Mr Ogmore and Mr Pritchard,

who all dead day long have been

gossiping like ghosts
in the woodshed,

planning the loveless destruction
of their glass widow,

reluctantly sigh and sidle into
her clean house.

You first, Mr Ogmore.

After you, Mr Pritchard.

No, no, Mr Ogmore.
You widowed her first.

And in through the keyhole

with tears where their eyes
once were,

they ooze and grumble.

Husbands...

She says in her sleep.

There is acid love in her voice

for one of the two shambling
phantoms.

Mr Ogmore
hopes that it is not for him.

So does Mr Pritchard.

I love you both.

Oh, Mrs Ogmore.

Oh, Mrs Pritchard.

Soon it will be time to go to bed.

Tell me your tasks in order.

We must take our pyjamas
from the drawer marked "pyjamas".

And then you must take them off.

Down in the dusking town,
Mae Rose-Cottage,

still lying in clover,
listens to the nanny goats chew,

draws circles of lipstick
round her nipples.

I'm fast.

I'm a bad lot.

God will strike me dead.

I'm 17.

I'll go to hell...

She tells the goats.

You just wait.

I'll sin till I blow up!

She lies deep,
waiting for the worst to happen,

as the goats champ and sneer.

Unmarried girls, alone
in their privately bridal bedrooms,

powder and curl
for the Dance of the World.

Mr Waldo, in his corner
of the Sailor's Arms, sings...

♪ In Pembroke City when I was young

♪ I lived by the Castle Keep

♪ Sixpence a week was my wages

♪ For working for the chimbley-sweep

♪ Six cold pennies he gave me

♪ Not a farthing more or less

♪ And all the fare I could afford

♪ Was parsnip gin and watercress

♪ Sweep, sweep, chimbley sweep

♪ I wept through Pembroke City

♪ Poor and barefoot in the snow

♪ Till a kind young woman took pity

♪ Poor little chimbley sweep,
she said

♪ Black as the ace of spades

♪ Oh, nobody's swept my chimbley

♪ Since my husband went his ways ♪

♪ Come and sweep my chimbley,
she sighed to me with a blush

♪ Come and sweep my chimbley

♪ Bring along your chimbley brush. ♪

And at the doorway
of Bethesda House,

the Reverend Jenkins recites to
Llaregyb Hill his sunset poem.

♪ Every morning when I wake

♪ Dear Lord, a little prayer I make

♪ O please to keep Thy loving eye

♪ On all poor creatures born to die

♪ And every evening at sundown

♪ I ask a blessing on the town

♪ For whether we last the night or no

♪ I'm sure is always touch and go

♪ We are not wholly bad or good

♪ Who live our lives under Milk Wood

♪ And Thou, I know, wilt be the first

♪ To see our best side

♪ Not our worst

♪ O let us see another day!

♪ Bless us this night, I pray

♪ And to the sun we all will bow

♪ And say, goodbye

♪ But just for now. ♪

Blind Captain Cat
climbs into his bunk.

Like a cat, he sees in the dark.

Through the voyages of his tears
he sails to see the dead.

Dancing Williams!

Still dancing.

Jonah Jarvis.

Still.

Rosie, with God.
She has forgotten dying.

The dead come out
in their Sunday best.

Listen to the night breaking.

Mr Mog Edwards
and Miss Myfanwy Price,

happily apart from one another at
the top and the sea-end of town,

write their everynight letters
of love and desire.

In the warm White Book of Llareggub,

you will find the little maps of
the islands of their contentment.

Oh, my Mog, I am yours for ever.

And she looks around with pleasure
at her own neat neverdull room

which Mr Mog Edwards
will never enter.

Come to my arms, Myfanwy.

And he hugs his lovely money
to his own heart.

And Mr Waldo, drunk in the dusky
wood, hugs his lovely Polly Garter

under the eyes and rattling tongues
of the neighbours and the birds,

and he does not care.

He smacks his live red lips.

But it is not his name that Polly
Garter whispers as she lies

under the oak and loves him back.
♪ But I always think

♪ As we tumble into bed... ♪
Six feet deep,

that name sings in the cold earth.
♪ ..of little Willy Wee

♪ Who is dead, dead, dead. ♪

The thin night darkens.

A breeze from the creased water
sighs the streets close

under Milk waking Wood.

The Wood,
whose every tree-foot's cloven

in the black glad sight
of the hunters of lovers,

that is a God-built garden
to Mary Ann Sailors,

who knows there is
a heaven on earth

and the chosen people of his kind
fire in Llareggub's land.

That is the fairday farm hands' wantoning
ignorant chapel of bridesbeds,

and, to the Reverend Eli Jenkins,

a greenleaved sermon
on the innocence of men,

the suddenly wind-shaken wood

springs awake for the second
dark time this one spring day.

♪ Bless us this night, I pray

♪ And to the sun we all will bow

♪ And say goodbye

♪ But just for now. ♪

Perfect. Cut there. We got it.

Thank you very much.

That was great!

Spot on, man.

I feel so self-conscious!

All right, can we go again?

"Do Not Go Gentle Into That
Good Night" performed by John Cale

♪ Rage at the dying of the light

♪ Rage at the dying of the light. ♪