Clifford Dyment

Clifford Dyment Poems

Clifford Dyment Biography

Clifford Henry Dyment (20 January 1914 – 5 June 1971) was a British poet, literary critic, editor and journalist, best known for his poems on countryside topics. Born to Welsh parents, his mother was widowed when Dyment was four years old. Born in Alfreton, Derbyshire, he spent his early childhood in Caerleon-on-Usk but was educated at Loughborough Grammar School in Leicestershire. His poem "The Son" was occasioned by his discovery of a letter written by his conscripted father prior to his death in World War I. Another Dyment poem "From Many a Mangled Truth a War is Won" laments the tendency to invent pretexts and justifications for wars. His first published collection was First Day (1935). During the latter part of the 1930s he was a literary figure in London. During World War II he was engaged to make films, working for the British government. His poem As a boy with a richness of needs I wandered was included by Philip Larkin in The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, in 1971. The poem Mouse was set to music by Betty Roe as part of her song cycle of Cat and Mouse (1987). He received a Rockefeller Foundation Atlantic Award in 1950.)

The Best Poem Of Clifford Dyment

The Son

I found the letter in a cardboard box,
Unfamous history. I read the words.
The ink was frail and brown, the paper dry
After so many years of being kept.
The letter was a soldier's, from the front—
Conveyed his love and disappointed hope
Of getting leave. It's cancelled now, he wrote.
My luck is at the bottom of the sea.

Outside the sun was hot; the world looked bright;
I heard a radio, and someone laughed.
I did not sing, or laugh, or love the sun,
Within the quiet room I thought of him,
My father killed, and all the other men,
Whose luck was at the bottom of the sea.

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