Driver Modem Nfa - 01a

Love in the asylum


A Stranger Has Come To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

stranger came with me to share my room in the house moody,
a girl mad as birds

That bar the night of the door with his arm down in bed delirious

narrow escapes Home proof of sky with clouds intrusive

And the room with his nightmares eludes
walk up and down like the dead, or riding the oceans
imagined by male lanes.

was invaded,
who enters the deceptive light bouncing off the wall, invade the sky


troguolo sleeps in close and yet walk in the dust

raves and his pleasure over the worn planks of the asylum walking by my tears.

and kidnapped at the end (expensive end) into his arms by the light
I can endure without failing
the first vision that set fire to the stars.

( Translation of Ariodante Marianni )

Written between May and June of 1941, the poem had appeared for the first time on "Poetry" , London, VI, and was then gathered in "Death and Entrances ". In
asylum was set also the story "The Mouse and the woman" , in the collection The map of love. "Or rides the imagined oceans of the wrong wards" is a metaphor that alludes to the possibility that the woman dreams other men ( rides, ride, has an obvious sexual meaning), and on this subject and it aroused jealousy in Thomas, pushed up to investigate the size of the unconscious and dreams of his wife, focuses all the poetry "Into her lying down head" in May 1940.