The untitled poem is a nostalgic farewell to Wales, written in a style influenced by his friend and countryman Dylan Thomas. “Portrait of a Man Drowning” was apparently written in November of 1965, while Burton was filming the bleak, Cold-War era film, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Neither poem has been published before now. 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 dexterity 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.
