Portrait of a Man Drowning
Richard Burton (1965)

The mountain earth feels damp against my hand;
Around me sway a thousand sap-filled stalks
Of tender grass; The cows browse drowsily
Below me in the fields, and silly sheep
Bleat so pathetically. Dusk descends
And makes the cool earth cooler; lovers slow
In Sunday best drift past like ghosts of laughs
And murmurings; and some go up and some
Go down the mountain.
I see the gamblers hide behind some hedge or shade,
And play silently between desterity
Of toil's blunt fingers shuffling dirty cards;
And panting greyhounds run a merry race around them
In the fading light.
There is no life stir now
There is no hub-bub of activity;
The rushing of the whispering waterfall
Breathes silence on the mad tormented valley.
The voices rise insidiously as is
The creeping dusk "Abide with me'', they moan,
A hundred coal-fogged voices harmoniously
Goad up in an ecstasy of melancholy magic;
All is still.
And there were things that made me;
Grew around the core of my young soul,
But I have other worlds for whom to weep;
I shall return no more.