Clouds of War and Moral Disintegration April 2026

  Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (1818/1824)
Caspar David Friedrich 
[Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin]

As the clouds of war and lawless horror mass over us tonight, I cannot speak or write, choked as I am with emotion at the spectacle of moral disintegration, even as men miraculously travel around the moon. Not a single word of congratulation or recognition from 'the proud man apart'...

Memories of this poem by the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, read as a youth when in love and in the midst of the Vietnam war, shockingly floods my brain once more as being singularly appropriate tonight ...

In My Craft or Sullen Art

by Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art

Exercised in the still night

When only the moon rages

And the lovers lie abed

With all their griefs in their arms,

I labour by singing light

Not for ambition or bread

Or the strut and trade of charms

On the ivory stages

But for the common wages

Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.