Dylan on the Northern Line

DYLAN ON THE NORTHERN LINE

...though I sang in my chains like the sea.
-Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

Now I was young and read you in the crowded trains,
down clattering tracks that racked to the city and back.
In the daily commuting I would dream of the change
(that we know never came) and I silently chanted
tambourine man and a hummed a hard rain.
But mostly, mostly it was you, the authentic one.
Your words were incantation while others read the news.
But the sewn flesh and the fire, the bold cryptic utterance,
all the colour of saying, was not mine to own
(I was awkward and lean; not golden, just green)
but the myth was enough-
and I dreamed as I passed the awakening dark
after sunset burned scrapers and streetlights and cars
needled the night.
Now I'm older- the unknown millenium
is knocking on history's door. Long, long ago
you died in dark flames of depression and fame-
that one last whisky blotting out
all the middle-aged years and time's moderation.
But I was moderate always, except that for me,
deep in some secret heat of the heart, somewhere apart,
how I wished I could sing in my chains like the sea.