Explore "Why East Wind Chills" by Dylan Thomas on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Why east wind chills and south wind cools / Shall not be known till windwell dries / And west's no longer drowned / In winds that bring the fruit and rind
Of many a hundred falls; / Why silk is soft and the stone wounds / The child shall question all his days, / Why night-time rain and the breast's blood / Both quench his thirst he'll have a black reply.
When cometh Jack Frost? the children ask.
Shall they clasp a comet in their fists?
Not till, from high and low, their dust / Sprinkles in children's eyes a long-last sleep / And dusk is crowded with the children's ghosts,
Shall a white answer echo from the rooftops.
All things are known: the stars' advice / Calls some content to travel with the winds, / Though what the stars ask as they round / Time upon time the towers of the skies
Is heard but little till the stars go out.
I hear content, and ‘Be content' / Ring like a handbell through the corridors, / And ‘Know no answer', and I know / No answer to the children's cry
Of echo's answer and the man of frost / And ghostly comets over the raised fists.