Love and forgetting – Beautiful Under Milk Wood

In Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas, “Blind Captain Cat”, who listens to the goings-on in the little Welsh seaside town from where he sits at his window, remembers the prostitute whom he loved in his youth, and who died long ago. Her name was “Rosie Probert”. The dead speak quite clearly to Blind Captain Cat in this play for voices. Rosie also has a voice, and, as she says, oozing sexiness and ghostliness, “Come on up, boys. I’m dead.”

The play, which is actually a long prose-poem, starts with the most wonderful opening lines that describe the little town that sits at the foot of Llareggub Hill.

Night time in Milk Wood

"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, fishingboatbobbing 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." 

— Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas (JM Dent & Sons Ltd., London, UK, 1954)

So, why is the whole of this poem so unforgettable? It’s because reading the lines out loud is like eating a string of candy. Each word is a bit of deliciousness that leads to the next one. The most famous recording is by the BBC, from 1954, in which Richard Burton, who was of course Welsh, reads the part of the narrator – and these long run-ons of alliterations, onomatopoeia, and all sorts of rhymes were no problem for him. They just roll off his tongue.

Forgetting the dead

So, here are lines from Under Milk Wood that have made me stop and think a hundred times. And still makes me get a lump in my throat.

       ROSIE PROBERT (Softly)

Knock twice, Jack,
At the door of my grave
And ask for Rosie.

        CAPTAIN CAT (Weeping)

Rosie Probert.

        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.

— Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas (JM Dent & Sons Ltd., London, UK, 1954)

Thomas is saying that death is forgetting; forgetting everything – that you were born, and that you died, and you will vanish entirely once the last person alive forgets you. The you that is “you” will vanish and go into the darkness forever.

He expresses this long farewell by first writing Rosie’s speech in the 3rd person, then in the 1st person, in other words, she is losing her connection to others who are still alive and remember her. She is becoming herself, and going on alone. I used to think this was sad, but the memory of Rosie, who he loved, was painful to Captain Cat. So when she is finally gone, his pain is gone too.

And that’s why I think these lines are beautiful.

---