The stars were out and twinkling last evening as we walked back from meditation. It was if seeing the array for the first time with all the questions a child would ask when first discovering the vastness of space. Discovering anew, thank goodness that is possible. If the sense of wonder goes out of life and living things may well have taken a downward turn.
I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.
From A Child’s Christmas in Wales – Dylan Thomas
Back in 2005 I quoted the last line of this famous poem in a post.The dark last night was a ‘close and holy darkness’. For some people looking up into the night sky is a spiritual experience, a touching of the infinite and I can relate to that. Last night I could anyway. So if you are out and about this evening waiting for the year to turn into another one take a look, look up and appreciate the cosmos. In spiritual terms, that which is without edges. Us Earthlings are but a spec are we not.
Attached to that 2005 post is a comment left by the now late Iain Robinson. I’ve copied it below for interest and for remembrance of him. Three year gone come this July.
Iain on December 26, 2005 at 6:02 pm said:
A long time ago I used to have a lot to do with Swansea and would regularly pass Dylan Thomas’ parent’s home in the Uplands. That was the house he was remembering in “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”I knew a lady in the town who at seventeen had been very actively ‘courted’ by Dylan. She worked in the local depot of W.H. Smith Wholesale and he used to hang out at Ralph’s bookshop across the road. Her dad warned her “Don’t ever let me catch you talking to that bad boy!” Another path not chosen there …
One of Dylan Thomas’ lines from the introduction to ‘Under Milk Wood is the quotation I’m using on the title page of my thesis
“Time passes. Listen. Time passes”