"Your Breath Was Shed"

By Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953)

Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet who achieved poetic success early in his career. There is a tradition in poetry criticism to refer to poems which do not have titles by their first line, however this poem was given a title by Dylan Thomas. He originally insisted that this poem be title “Poem.”

Your breath was shed
Invisible to make
About the soiled undead
Night for my sake,

A raining trail
Intangible to them
With biter's tooth and tail
And cobweb drum,

A dark as deep
My love as a round wave
To hide the wolves of sleep
And mask the grave.

One reason a poem can fail is if too much context is stripped away. In an effort to be minimalistic and leave only the emotional core of a poem, it is easy to go too far and remove the ability of a reader to make any sort of connection or find any objective meaning in a poem. Poems can be ambiguous, but they ought never be incoherent.

Dylan Thomas here gives us an example of how to strip away context and total certainty, but leave a connected and coherent poem rather than seemingly random list of adjectives. Each stanza of this poem seems to be dealing with three parties. There is the speaker of the poem, the person that the speaker is addressing when they say “your breath”, and some sort of ominous hunting party. The third party is referred to as “the soiled undead,” “them with biter’s tooth and tail,” and “the wolves of sleep.”

As for the full extent of what is happening between these three parties, here Thomas’ minimalist style opens the door to a multiple subjective interpretations. What do you see? What words or phrases from the poem indicate a specific relationship? What does the ominous third party represent?

I see this poem as a thank you to someone who has sacrificed themself for the sake of the other. Their breath was shed “to make … night for my sake.” They gave themselves up to make sure that their beloved was unable to be seen by the formless horrors. They created a “trail” or a path forward that was “intangible” to the ones with claws. The “dark” they created for the speaker of the poem to hide in was “as deep” as their love, and in that love even the “grave” was hidden.

Perhaps I am being too literal with my interpretation of these “wolves” as evil forces from whom our speaker needs to be saved. Ambiguity is a great strength of poems like these. Perhaps I am projecting this idea of a salvific love onto the poem. What do you think?