Now the town is disk. Each cobble, donkey, goose and
gooseberry street is a thoroughfare of dusk; and dusk and
ceremonial dust, and- night's first darkening snow, and
the sleep of birds, drift under and through the live dusk
of this place of love. Llaregyb is the capital of dusk.
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, at the first drop of the
dusk-shower, seals all her sea-view doors, draws the
germ-free blinds, sits, erect as a dry dream on a
high-backed hygienic chair and wills herself to cold,
quick sleep. At once, at twice, Mr Ogmore and Mr
Pritchard, who all dead day long have been gossiping like
ghosts in the woodshed, planning the loveless destruction
of their glass widow, reluctantly sigh and sidle into her
clean house.
MR PRITCHARD
You first, Mr Ogmore.
MR OGMORE
After you, Mr Pritchard.
MR PRITCHARD
No, no, Mr Ogmore. You widowed her first.
FIRST VOICE
And in through the keyhole, with tears where their eyes
once were, they ooze and grumble.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
Husbands,
FIRST VOICE
she says in her sleep. There is acid love in her voice for
one of the two shambling phantoms. Mr Ogmore hopes that it
is not for him. So does Mr Pritchard.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
I love you both.
MR OGMORE (With terror)
Oh, Mrs Ogmore.
MR PRITCHARD (With horror)
Oh, Mrs Pritchard.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
Soon it will be time to go to bed. Tell me your tasks in order.
MR OGMORE AND MR PRITCHARD
We must take our pyjamas from the drawer marked pyjamas.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD (Coldly)
And then you must take them off.
SECOND VOICE
Down in the dusking town, Mae Rose Cottage, still lying in
clover, listens to the nannygoats chew, draws circles of
lipstick round her nipples.
MAE ROSE COTTAGE
I'm fast. I'm a bad lot. God will strike me dead. I'm
seventeen. I'll go to hell,
SECOND VOICE
she tells the goats.
MAE ROSE COTTAGE
You just wait. I'll sin till I blow up!
SECOND VOICE
She lies deep, waiting for the worst to happen; the goats
champ and sneer.
FIRST VOICE
And at the doorway of Bethesda House, the Reverend Jenkins
recites to Llaregyb Hill his sunset poem.
REV. ELI JENKINS
Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die
And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I'm sure is always touch-and-go.
We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.
O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say, good-bye--but just for now!
FIRST VOICE
Jack Black prepares once more to meet his Satan in the
Wood. He grinds his night-teeth, closes his eyes, climbs
into his religious trousers, their flies sewn up with
cobbler's thread, and pads out, torched and bibled,
grimly, joyfully, into the already sinning dusk.
JACK BLACK
Off to Gomorrah!
SECOND VOICE
And Lily Smalls is up to Nogood Boyo in the wash-house.
FIRST VOICE
And Cherry Owen, sober as Sunday as he is every day of the
week, goes off happy as Saturday to get drunk as a deacon
as he does every night.
CHERRY OWEN
I always say she's got two husbands,
FIRST VOICE
says Cherry Owen,
CHERRY OWEN
one drunk and one sober.
FIRST VOICE
And Mrs Cherry simply says
MRS CHERRY OWEN
And aren't I a lucky woman? Because I love them both.
SINBAD
Evening, Cherry.
CHERRY OWEN
Evening, Sinbad.
SINBAD
What'll you have?
CHERRY OWEN
Too much.
SINBAD
The Sailors Arms is always open...
FIRST VOICE
Sinbad suffers to himself, heartbroken,
SINBAD
...oh, Gossamer, open yours!
FIRST VOICE
Dusk is drowned for ever until to-morrow, It is all at
once night now, The windy town is a hill of windows, and
from the larrupped waves the lights of the lamps in the
windows call back the day and the dead that have run away
to sea. All over the calling dark, babies and old men are
bribed and lullabied to sleep.
FIRST WOMAN'S VOICE
Hushabye, baby, the sandman is coming...
SECOND WOMAN'S VOICE (Singing)
Rockabye, grandpa, in the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come grandpa, whiskers and all.
FIRST VOICE
Or their daughters cover up the old unwinking men like
parrots, and in their little dark in the lit and bustling
young kitchen corners, all night long they watch,
beady-eyed, the long night through in case death catches
them asleep.
SECOND VOICE
Unmarried girls, alone in their privately bridal bedrooms,
powder and curl for the Dance of the World.
[Accordion music: dim]
They make, in front of their looking-glasses, haughty or
come-hithering faces for the young men in the street
outside, at the lamplit leaning corners, who wait in the
all-at-once wind to wolve and whistle.
[Accordion music louder, then fading under]
FIRST VOICE
The drinkers in the Sailors Arms drink to the failure of
the dance.
A DRINKER
Down with the waltzing and the skipping.
CHERRY OWEN
Dancing isn't natural,
FIRST VOICE
righteously says Cherry Owen who has just downed seventeen
pints of flat, warm, thin, Welsh, bitter beer.
SECOND VOICE
A farmer's lantern glimmers, a spark on Llaregyb hillside.
[Accordion music fades into silence]
VOICE FIRST
Llaregyb Hill, writes the Reverend Jenkins in his poem-room,
REV. ELI JENKINS
Llaregyb Hill, that mystic tumulus, the memorial of
peoples that dwelt in the region of Llaregyb before the
Celts left the Land of Summer and where the old wizards
made themselves a wife out of flowers.
SECOND VOICE
Mr Waldo, in his corner of the Sailors Arms, sings:
MR WALDO
In Pembroke City when I was young
I lived by the Castle Keep
Sixpence a week was my wages
For working for the chimbley-sweep.
Six cold pennies he
gave me Not a farthing more or less
And all the fare I could afford
Was parsnip gin and watercress.
I did not need a knife and fork
Or a bib up to my chin
To dine on a dish of watercress
And a jug of parsnip gin.
Did you ever hear a growing boy
To live so cruel cheap
On grub that has no flesh and bones
And liquor that makes you weep?
Sweep sweep chimbley sweep,
I wept through Pembroke City
Poor and barefoot in the snow
Till a kind young woman took pity.
Poor little chimbley sweep she said
Black as the ace of spades
O nobody's swept my chimbley
Since my husband went his ways
Come and sweep my chimbley
Come and sweep my chimbley
She sighed to me with a blush
Come and sweep my chimbley
Come and sweep my chimbley
Bring along your chimbley brush!
FIRST VOICE
Blind Captain Cat climbs into his bunk. Like a cat, he
sees in the dark. Through the voyages of his tears he
sails to see the dead.
CAPTAIN CAT
Dancing Williams!
FIRST DROWNED
Still dancing.
CAPTAIN CAT
Jonah Jarvis
THIRD DROWNED
Still.
FIRST DROWNED
Curly Bevan's skull.
ROSIE PROBERT
Rosie, with God. She has forgotten dying.
FIRST VOICE
The dead come out in their Sunday best.
SECOND VOICE
Listen to the night breaking.
FIRST VOICE
Organ Morgan goes to chapel to play the organ. He sees
Bach lying on a tombstone.
ORGAN MORGAN
Johann Sebastian!
CHERRY OWEN (Drunkenly)
Who?
ORGAN MORGAN
Johann Sebastian mighty Bach. Oh, Bach fach
CHERRY OWEN
To hell with you,
FIRST VOICE
says Cherry Owen who is resting on the tombstone on his
way home.
Mr Mog Edwards and Miss Myfanwy Price happily apart from
one another at the top and the sea end of the town write
their everynight letters of love and desire. In the warm
White Book of Llaregyb you will find the little maps of
the islands of their contentment.
MYFANWY PRICE
Oh, my Mog, I am yours for ever.
FIRST VOICE
And she looks around with pleasure at her own neat
neverdull room which Mr Mog Edwards will never enter.
MOG EDWARDS
Come to my arms, Myfanwy.
FIRST VOICE
And he hugs his lovely money to his own heart.
And Mr Waldo drunk in the dusky wood hugs his lovely Polly
Garter under the eyes and rattling tongues of the
neighbours and the birds, and he does not care. He smacks
his live red lips.
But it is not his name that Polly Garter whispers as she
lies under the oak and loves him back. Six feet deep that
name sings in the cold earth.
POLLY GARTER (Sings)
But I always think as we tumble into bed
Of little w**** Wee who is dead, dead, dead.
FIRST VOICE
The thin night darkens. A breeze from the creased water
sighs the streets close under Milk waking Wood. The Wood,
whose every tree-foot's cloven in the black glad sight of
the hunters of lovers, that is a God-built garden to Mary
Ann Sailors who knows there is Heaven on earth and the
chosen people of His kind fire in Llaregyb's land, that is
the fairday farmhands' wantoning ignorant chapel of
bridesbeds, and, to the Reverend Eli Jenkins, a greenleaved
sermon on the innocence of men, the suddenly wind-shaken
wood springs awake for the second dark time this one
Spring day.
THE END
gooseberry street is a thoroughfare of dusk; and dusk and
ceremonial dust, and- night's first darkening snow, and
the sleep of birds, drift under and through the live dusk
of this place of love. Llaregyb is the capital of dusk.
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, at the first drop of the
dusk-shower, seals all her sea-view doors, draws the
germ-free blinds, sits, erect as a dry dream on a
high-backed hygienic chair and wills herself to cold,
quick sleep. At once, at twice, Mr Ogmore and Mr
Pritchard, who all dead day long have been gossiping like
ghosts in the woodshed, planning the loveless destruction
of their glass widow, reluctantly sigh and sidle into her
clean house.
MR PRITCHARD
You first, Mr Ogmore.
MR OGMORE
After you, Mr Pritchard.
MR PRITCHARD
No, no, Mr Ogmore. You widowed her first.
FIRST VOICE
And in through the keyhole, with tears where their eyes
once were, they ooze and grumble.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
Husbands,
FIRST VOICE
she says in her sleep. There is acid love in her voice for
one of the two shambling phantoms. Mr Ogmore hopes that it
is not for him. So does Mr Pritchard.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
I love you both.
MR OGMORE (With terror)
Oh, Mrs Ogmore.
MR PRITCHARD (With horror)
Oh, Mrs Pritchard.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
Soon it will be time to go to bed. Tell me your tasks in order.
MR OGMORE AND MR PRITCHARD
We must take our pyjamas from the drawer marked pyjamas.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD (Coldly)
And then you must take them off.
SECOND VOICE
Down in the dusking town, Mae Rose Cottage, still lying in
clover, listens to the nannygoats chew, draws circles of
lipstick round her nipples.
MAE ROSE COTTAGE
I'm fast. I'm a bad lot. God will strike me dead. I'm
seventeen. I'll go to hell,
SECOND VOICE
she tells the goats.
MAE ROSE COTTAGE
You just wait. I'll sin till I blow up!
SECOND VOICE
She lies deep, waiting for the worst to happen; the goats
champ and sneer.
FIRST VOICE
And at the doorway of Bethesda House, the Reverend Jenkins
recites to Llaregyb Hill his sunset poem.
REV. ELI JENKINS
Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die
And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I'm sure is always touch-and-go.
We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.
O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say, good-bye--but just for now!
FIRST VOICE
Jack Black prepares once more to meet his Satan in the
Wood. He grinds his night-teeth, closes his eyes, climbs
into his religious trousers, their flies sewn up with
cobbler's thread, and pads out, torched and bibled,
grimly, joyfully, into the already sinning dusk.
JACK BLACK
Off to Gomorrah!
SECOND VOICE
And Lily Smalls is up to Nogood Boyo in the wash-house.
FIRST VOICE
And Cherry Owen, sober as Sunday as he is every day of the
week, goes off happy as Saturday to get drunk as a deacon
as he does every night.
CHERRY OWEN
I always say she's got two husbands,
FIRST VOICE
says Cherry Owen,
CHERRY OWEN
one drunk and one sober.
FIRST VOICE
And Mrs Cherry simply says
MRS CHERRY OWEN
And aren't I a lucky woman? Because I love them both.
SINBAD
Evening, Cherry.
CHERRY OWEN
Evening, Sinbad.
SINBAD
What'll you have?
CHERRY OWEN
Too much.
SINBAD
The Sailors Arms is always open...
FIRST VOICE
Sinbad suffers to himself, heartbroken,
SINBAD
...oh, Gossamer, open yours!
FIRST VOICE
Dusk is drowned for ever until to-morrow, It is all at
once night now, The windy town is a hill of windows, and
from the larrupped waves the lights of the lamps in the
windows call back the day and the dead that have run away
to sea. All over the calling dark, babies and old men are
bribed and lullabied to sleep.
FIRST WOMAN'S VOICE
Hushabye, baby, the sandman is coming...
SECOND WOMAN'S VOICE (Singing)
Rockabye, grandpa, in the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come grandpa, whiskers and all.
FIRST VOICE
Or their daughters cover up the old unwinking men like
parrots, and in their little dark in the lit and bustling
young kitchen corners, all night long they watch,
beady-eyed, the long night through in case death catches
them asleep.
SECOND VOICE
Unmarried girls, alone in their privately bridal bedrooms,
powder and curl for the Dance of the World.
[Accordion music: dim]
They make, in front of their looking-glasses, haughty or
come-hithering faces for the young men in the street
outside, at the lamplit leaning corners, who wait in the
all-at-once wind to wolve and whistle.
[Accordion music louder, then fading under]
FIRST VOICE
The drinkers in the Sailors Arms drink to the failure of
the dance.
A DRINKER
Down with the waltzing and the skipping.
CHERRY OWEN
Dancing isn't natural,
FIRST VOICE
righteously says Cherry Owen who has just downed seventeen
pints of flat, warm, thin, Welsh, bitter beer.
SECOND VOICE
A farmer's lantern glimmers, a spark on Llaregyb hillside.
[Accordion music fades into silence]
VOICE FIRST
Llaregyb Hill, writes the Reverend Jenkins in his poem-room,
REV. ELI JENKINS
Llaregyb Hill, that mystic tumulus, the memorial of
peoples that dwelt in the region of Llaregyb before the
Celts left the Land of Summer and where the old wizards
made themselves a wife out of flowers.
SECOND VOICE
Mr Waldo, in his corner of the Sailors Arms, sings:
MR WALDO
In Pembroke City when I was young
I lived by the Castle Keep
Sixpence a week was my wages
For working for the chimbley-sweep.
Six cold pennies he
gave me Not a farthing more or less
And all the fare I could afford
Was parsnip gin and watercress.
I did not need a knife and fork
Or a bib up to my chin
To dine on a dish of watercress
And a jug of parsnip gin.
Did you ever hear a growing boy
To live so cruel cheap
On grub that has no flesh and bones
And liquor that makes you weep?
Sweep sweep chimbley sweep,
I wept through Pembroke City
Poor and barefoot in the snow
Till a kind young woman took pity.
Poor little chimbley sweep she said
Black as the ace of spades
O nobody's swept my chimbley
Since my husband went his ways
Come and sweep my chimbley
Come and sweep my chimbley
She sighed to me with a blush
Come and sweep my chimbley
Come and sweep my chimbley
Bring along your chimbley brush!
FIRST VOICE
Blind Captain Cat climbs into his bunk. Like a cat, he
sees in the dark. Through the voyages of his tears he
sails to see the dead.
CAPTAIN CAT
Dancing Williams!
FIRST DROWNED
Still dancing.
CAPTAIN CAT
Jonah Jarvis
THIRD DROWNED
Still.
FIRST DROWNED
Curly Bevan's skull.
ROSIE PROBERT
Rosie, with God. She has forgotten dying.
FIRST VOICE
The dead come out in their Sunday best.
SECOND VOICE
Listen to the night breaking.
FIRST VOICE
Organ Morgan goes to chapel to play the organ. He sees
Bach lying on a tombstone.
ORGAN MORGAN
Johann Sebastian!
CHERRY OWEN (Drunkenly)
Who?
ORGAN MORGAN
Johann Sebastian mighty Bach. Oh, Bach fach
CHERRY OWEN
To hell with you,
FIRST VOICE
says Cherry Owen who is resting on the tombstone on his
way home.
Mr Mog Edwards and Miss Myfanwy Price happily apart from
one another at the top and the sea end of the town write
their everynight letters of love and desire. In the warm
White Book of Llaregyb you will find the little maps of
the islands of their contentment.
MYFANWY PRICE
Oh, my Mog, I am yours for ever.
FIRST VOICE
And she looks around with pleasure at her own neat
neverdull room which Mr Mog Edwards will never enter.
MOG EDWARDS
Come to my arms, Myfanwy.
FIRST VOICE
And he hugs his lovely money to his own heart.
And Mr Waldo drunk in the dusky wood hugs his lovely Polly
Garter under the eyes and rattling tongues of the
neighbours and the birds, and he does not care. He smacks
his live red lips.
But it is not his name that Polly Garter whispers as she
lies under the oak and loves him back. Six feet deep that
name sings in the cold earth.
POLLY GARTER (Sings)
But I always think as we tumble into bed
Of little w**** Wee who is dead, dead, dead.
FIRST VOICE
The thin night darkens. A breeze from the creased water
sighs the streets close under Milk waking Wood. The Wood,
whose every tree-foot's cloven in the black glad sight of
the hunters of lovers, that is a God-built garden to Mary
Ann Sailors who knows there is Heaven on earth and the
chosen people of His kind fire in Llaregyb's land, that is
the fairday farmhands' wantoning ignorant chapel of
bridesbeds, and, to the Reverend Eli Jenkins, a greenleaved
sermon on the innocence of men, the suddenly wind-shaken
wood springs awake for the second dark time this one
Spring day.
THE END