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- Brian Chapple
Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines (1966)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Programme Note
LIGHT BREAKS NIERE NO SUN SHINES
Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines was written in 1966 and is a setting of the poem by Dylan Thomas. The high point of this through-composed song, both vocally and in intensity, is reached at the end of the middle verse. The last verse "Light breaks on secret lots" refers back to the opening of the song, but presents the earlier material in a more tranquil and sustained form.
Light breaks where no sun shines;
Were no sea runs, waters of the heart
Push in their tides,
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light -
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.
A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seed of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.
Dawn breaks behind the eyes
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spouting to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.
Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.
Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.
DYLAN THOMAS
(printed by kind permission of the Trustees of the Copyright
of the late Dylan Thomas)
Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines was written in 1966 and is a setting of the poem by Dylan Thomas. The high point of this through-composed song, both vocally and in intensity, is reached at the end of the middle verse. The last verse "Light breaks on secret lots" refers back to the opening of the song, but presents the earlier material in a more tranquil and sustained form.
Light breaks where no sun shines;
Were no sea runs, waters of the heart
Push in their tides,
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light -
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.
A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seed of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.
Dawn breaks behind the eyes
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spouting to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.
Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.
Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.
DYLAN THOMAS
(printed by kind permission of the Trustees of the Copyright
of the late Dylan Thomas)