The Music Of The Spheres Lyrics

[Long pause]

FIRST VOICE The music of the spheres is heard distinctly over Milk Wood. It is 'The Rustle of Spring.'

SECOND VOICE A glee-party sings in Bethesda Graveyard, gay but muffled.

FIRST VOICE Vegetables make love above the tenors

SECOND VOICE and dogs bark blue in the face.

FIRST VOICE Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard belches in a teeny hanky and chases the sunlight with a flywhisk, but even she cannot drive out the Spring: from one of the finger-bowls a primrose grows.

SECOND VOICE Mrs Dai Bread One and Mrs Dai Bread Two are sitting outside their house in Donkey Lane, one darkly one plumply blooming in the quick, dewy sun. Mrs Dai Bread Two is looking into a crystal ball which she holds in the lap of her dirty yellow petticoat, hard against her hard dark thighs.

MRS DAI BREAD TWO Cross my palm with silver. Out of our housekeeping money. Aah!

MRS DAI BREAD ONE What d'you see, lovie?

MRS DAI BREAD TWO I see a featherbed. With three pillows on it. And a text above the bed. I can't read what it says, there's great clouds blowing. Now they have blown away. God is Love, the text says.

MRS DAI BREAD ONE (Delighted) That's our bed.

MRS DAI BREAD TWO And now it's vanished. The sun's spinning like a top. Who's this coming out of the sun? It's a hairy little man with big pink lips. He got a wall eye.

MRS DAI BREAD ONE It's Dai, it's Dai Bread!

MRS DAI BREAD TWO Ssh! The featherbed's floating back. The little man's taking his boots off. He's pulling his shirt over his head. He's beating his chest with his fists. I le's climbing into bed.

MRS DAI BREAD ONE Go on, go on.

MRS DAI BREAD TWO There's two women in bed. He looks at them both, with his head cocked on one side. He's whistling through his teeth. Now he grips his little arms round one of the women.

MRS DAI BREAD ONE Which one, which one?

MRS DAI BREAD TWO I can't see any more. There's great clouds blowing again.

MRS DAI BREAD ONE Ach, the mean old clouds!

[Pause. The children's singing fades]

FIRST VOICE The morning is all singing. The Reverend Eli Jenkins, busy on his morning calls, stops outside the Welfare Hall to hear Polly Garter as she scrubs the floors for the Mothers' Union Dance to-night.

POLLY GARTER (Singing) I loved a man whose name was Tom He was strong as a bear and two yards long I loved a man whose name was Dick He was big as a barrel and three feet thick And I loved a man whose name was Harry Six feet tall and sweet as a cherry But the one I loved best awake or asleep Was little Willy Wee and he's six feet deep.

O Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men And I'll never have such loving again But little Willy Wee who took me on his knee Little Willy Wee was the man for me.

Now men from every parish round Run after me and roll me on the ground But whenever I love another man back Johnnie from the Hill or Sailing Jack I always think as they do what they please Of Tom Dick and Harry who were tall as trees And most I think when I'm by their side Of little Willy Wee who downed and died.

O Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men And I'll never have such loving again But little Willy Wee who took me on his knee Little Willy Weazel is, the man for me.

REV. ELI JENKINS Praise the Lord! We are a musical nation.

SECOND VOICE And the Reverend Jenkins hurries on through the town to visit the sick with jelly and poems.

FIRST VOICE The town's as full as a lovebird's egg.

MR WALDO There goes the Reverend,

FIRST VOICE says Mr Waldo at the smoked herring brown window of the unwashed Sailors Arms,

MR WALDO with his brolly and his odes. Fill 'em up, Sinbad, I'm on the treacle to-day.

SECOND VOICE The silent fishermen flush down their pints.

SINBAD Oh, Mr Waldo,

FIRST VOICE sighs Sinbad Sailors,

SINBAD I dote on that Gossamer Beynon. She's a lady all over.

FIRST VOICE And Mr Waldo, who is thinking of a woman soft as Eve and sharp as sciatica to share his bread-pudding bed, answers

MR WALDO No lady that I know is

SINBAD And if only grandma'd die, cross my heart I'd go down on my knees Mr Waldo and I'd say Miss Gossamer I'd say

CHILDREN'S VOICES When birds do sing hey ding a ding a ding Sweet lovers love the Spring...

SECOND VOICE Polly Garter sings, still on her knees,

POLLY GARTER Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men And I'll never have such

CHILDREN ding a ding

POLLY GARTER again.

FIRST VOICE And the morning school is over, and Captain Cat at his curtained schooner's porthole open to the Spring sun tides hears the naughty forfeiting children tumble and rhyme on the cobbles.
GIRLS' VOICES Gwennie call the boys They make such a noise.

GIRL Boys boys boys Come along to me'.

GIRLS' VOICES Boys boys boys Kiss Gwennie where she says Or give her a penny. Go on, Gwennie.

GIRL Kiss me in Goosegog Lane Or give me a penny. What's your name?

FIRST BOY Billy.

GIRL Kiss me in Goosegog Lane Billy Or give me a penny silly.

FIRST BOY Gwennie Gwennie I kiss you in Goosegog Lane. Now I haven't got to give you a penny.

GIRLS' VOICES Boys boys boys Kiss Gwennie where she says Or give her a penny. Go on, Gwennie.

GIRL Kiss me on Llaregyb Hill Or give me a penny. What's your name?

SECOND BOY Johnnie Cristo.

GIRL Kiss me on Llaregyb Hill Johnnie Cristo Or give me a penny mister.

SECOND BOY Gwennie Gwennie I kiss you on Llaregyb Hill. Now I haven't got to give you a penny.

GIRLS' VOICES Boys boys boys Kiss Gwennie where she says Or give her a penny. Go on, Gwennie.

GIRL Kiss me in Milk Wood Or give me a penny. What's your name?

THIRD BOY Dicky.

GIRL Kiss me in Milk Wood Dicky Or give me a penny quickly.

THIRD BOY Gwennie Gwennie I can't kiss you in Milk Wood.

GIRLS' VOICES Gwennie ask him why.

GIRL Why?

THIRD BOY Because my mother says I mustn't.

GIRLS' VOICES Cowardy cowardy custard Give Gwennie a penny.

GIRL Give me a penny.

THIRD BOY I haven't got any.

GIRLS' VOICES Put him in the river Up to his liver Quick quick Dirty Dick Beat him on the bum With a rhubarb stick. Aiee! Hush!

FIRST VOICE And the shrill girls giggle and master around him and squeal as they clutch and thrash, and he blubbers away downhill with his patched pants falling, and his tear-splashed blush burns all the way as the triumphant bird-like sisters scream with buttons in their claws and the bully brothers hoot after him his little nickname and his mother's shame and his father's wickedness with the loose wild barefoot women of the hovels of the hills. It all means nothing at all, and, howling for his milky mum, for her cawl and buttermilk and cowbreath and welshcakes and the fat birth-smelling bed and moonlit kitchen of her arms, he'll never forget as he paddles blind home through the weeping end of the world. Then his tormentors tussle and run to the Cockle Street sweet-shop, their pennies sticky as honey, to buy from Miss Myfanwy Price, who is cocky and neat as a puff-bosomed robin and her small round buttocks tight as ticks, gobstoppers big as wens that rainbow as you suck, brandyballs, winegums, hundreds and thousands, liquorice sweet as sick, nougat to tug and ribbon out like another red rubbery tongue, gum to glue in girls' curls, crimson coughdrops to spit blood, ice-cream comets, dandelion-and-burdock, raspberry and cherryade, pop goes the weasel and the wind.

SECOND VOICE Gossamer Beynon high-heels out of school The sun hums down through the cotton flowers of her dress into the bell of her heart and buzzes in the honey there and couches and kisses, lazy-loving and boozed, in her red-berried breast. Eyes run from the trees and windows of the street, steaming 'Gossamer,' and strip her to the nipples and the bees. She blazes naked past the Sailors Arms, the only woman on the Dai-Adamed earth. Sinbad Sailors places on her thighs still dewdamp from the first mangrowing cockcrow garden his reverent goat-bearded hands.

GOSSAMER BEYNON I don't care if he is common,

SECOND VOICE she whispers to her salad-day deep self,

GOSSAMER BEYNON

I want to gobble him up. I don't care if he does drop his aitches,

SECOND VOICE she tells the stripped and mother-of-the-world big-beamed and Eve-hipped spring of her self,

GOSSAMER BEYNON so long as he's all cucumber and hooves.

SECOND VOICE Sinbad Sailors watches her go by, demure and proud and schoolmarm in her crisp flower dress and sun-defying hat, with never a look or lilt or wriggle, the butcher's unmelting icemaiden daughter veiled for ever from the hungry hug of his eyes.

SINBAD SAILORS Oh, Gossamer Beynon, why are you so proud?

SECOND VOICE he grieves to his guinness,

SINBAD SAILORS Oh, beautiful beautiful Gossamer B, I wish I wish that you were for me. I wish you were not so educated.

SECOND VOICE She feels his goatbeard tickle her in the middle of the world like a tuft of wiry fire, and she turns in a terror of delight away from his whips and whiskery conflagration, and sits down in the kitchen to a plate heaped high with chips and the kidneys of lambs.

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