AN ATTEMPT TO MOURN THE DEATH, BY BOOZE, OF A POET IN WALES

by Richard Jay Goldstein

the pilgrimage

Here I am, stuck in little Laugharne, in Wales, trying to get back to Carmarthen, and from there to Swansea, where my family waits. This is a pilgrimage, or half a pilgrimage. Pilgrimages are good things. They give purpose to what might otherwise be aimless wandering.

But here’s something I know. No journey’s more dangerous than a pilgrimage.

Today I stood at the white-wooden-crossed rumpled grave of Dylan Thomas. My plan, my pilgrimage, was to introduce Dylan to Nikos Kazantzakis, in the dim tea-room of my mind, with announcements in all the papers.

Refined Greek author, his eyes like coals, pale head bulging with unknown Zorbas, meets crazed & pudgy Welsh bard, smoking like a winter chimney, language thick as sausage grease on his brow. They had tea and whiskey.

* * *

The pilgrimage actually began on bee-buzzing Crete.

We were staying at the tiny Cretan Sun Hotel, in Heraclion, right in the market place. As vowed and planned, one morning I arose before dawn, monstrously hung-over, due to many glasses of ouzo the night before, trying to keep up with music-mad Cretans, glass for glass, toast for toast, shout for shout, dance for dance.

Risen, sick as a dog, I wobbled on foot out to the old city wall, to the grave of Kazantzakis, a tiny grassy green and stone pool on the dusty ancient mound above the town. I sat on the rough black granite of the tomb, with its wooden cross of unpainted sticks, head aching, and watched the hot Greek sun leap up, and thought lofty thoughts about the epitaph carved in Greek below me.

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

Some gardeners came to tend the grass, saw me sitting pale and red-eyed on the tomb, and retreated quickly, either deeply respectful of my reverie or thinking I was the ghost of Kazantzakis.

* * *

But now I’m getting drunk again, this time in your honor, Dylan.

I fulfilled today the second half of my vow, to look on your grave — having gazed first on the austere grave of Kazantzakis. And then to visit the shed where you worked, and sit where you sat chewing your pencil, and look out the window you looked out, and think about you and Kazantzakis in the same ragged thought, something seldom done in these degenerate days.

I did that, and made the needful introductions, but now I’m stuck in Laugharne, trying to get back to Carmarthen and Swansea, because the bus isn’t here, and nobody knows where it is.

I sat for awhile on a bench by the bus stop, looking at a graffitum on the wall across the street.

No, I’m not watching you, but, yes, I know where you are.

Then I wandered through town and into Cross House, venerable pub on Grist Square. After all, who wouldn’t hoist a beer in honor of Dylan Thomas, Swansea-born, America-silenced. Maybe there’s some John Lennon on the juke.

Sitting there, beer in hand, I realized belatedly if I was really to fulfill my vow, I would have to wax extreme, to hack at this rumpus of hours as you would have hacked, Dylan, to hoist many beers in the smoky twilight where you may very well have sat your own blubbery butt, to toast those shouting and mumbling poems you made here, and emerge star-browed in the clanging night to bellow at the empty sky, and to Hell with Kazantzakis.

That day I got lost where likely enough you got lost yourself, panted up the same green and cobbled hills, then through that cool grassy tunnel, and out at St. Martin’s Church — where you probably never went, except that one cold damp November when your poor booze-pickled body was brought home from New York. I found your untidy grave, in the weedy moldering churchyard, and Caitlin beside you, again, and hopefully both at peace, hearing in the distance, of all things, a band playing a bright march starry with trumpets.

I did a little Zorba dance while other pilgrims stared and sniffed.

Then it was back to town, and out again, along the cliff road, called Cliff Road at the town end, but called Dylan’s Walk at the Boat House end, because that’s what people do when someone local gets famous and there’s money to be made from it. But it should be called Dylan’s Stagger, because I imagine that’s what you did, of an evening or two, stuffed with words and whiskey, battered by moonlight.

Out on Dylan’s Walk I found the Boat House, just as advertised, and your creaky shed above, and your scuffed table, and the salt-marsh view from the window, multipaned like the eyes of flies. Could I sit there, mussed and dreamy, and see the long grass and the seabirds, and the blue finger of Carmarthen Bay, the way you did, and hear their tolling voices? Or hear the ghost voice of beautiful Caitlin, calling you to tea and brawling.

No, because other pilgrims crowded in, the way the world crowded into your heart, and I was crowded out.

So grumbling back to town, to no bus, and so to Cross House Pub, to drink with noisy modern urban folk, not the cranky Welsh farmers you drank with, Dylan. I think they didn’t care for you all that much, Dylan, those old folks, until you died and became famous, even though you carried on your plump and stooped shoulders the grizzled tradition of generations of moonstruck boneshaking Welsh warrior poets.

* * *

Now, many beers later, I’m drunk and crazy on the narrow west Wales streets, marching back to the bus stop, feeling gothic stories roiling in my head, and knowing this is my vision, and not yours, Dylan. That what sings and carries meaning beyond words or stars is not you, but what fired you, here on this weary and crumpled coast, my poor daft dear dirty and dead Dylan....

Is that the bus?

About Richard Jay Goldstein