Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry.

It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.

I may have grown more attentive to the news and more alive to the world history and world-sorrow behind it.

All I know is a door into the dark

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

In poetry, everything can be faked but the intensity of utterance.