CONFRONTATION

And there was the serpent
running like water
but more quietly with no desire
to bicker. They see us
with smooth eye; what is man
in a snake's world? And if
we would come too close,
they strike us painfully
as the truth.

It is no part
of divine mind to repudiate
its reflections. We must exchange
stare for stare, looking
into that eye as into a dark
crystal, asking if Eden
is where we must continually
seek to charm evil by playing
to it, knowing that it is deaf.

R.S. Thomas

BREAD

Hunger was loneliness, betrayed
By the pitiless candour of the stars'
Talk, in an old byre he prayed

Not for food; to pray was to know
Waking from a dark dream to find
The white loaf on the white snow.

Not for warmth, warmth brought the rain's
Blurring of the essential point
Of ice probing his raw pain.

He prayed for love, love that would share
His rags' secret; rising he broke
Like sun crumbling the gold air

The live bread for the starved folk.

R.S. Thomas

P.S. If you are enjoying Thomas's poetry, you may like to look at this article:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_2_118/ai_70451337/pg_1

It is an obituary; but don't let that put you off, as there are some interesting comments on his poems and beliefs.

"Even so . . . " (Revelation 22:20)

COMING

To be crucified
again? To be made friends
with for his jeans and beard?
Gods are not put to death

any more. Their lot now
is with the ignored.
I think he still comes
stealthily as of old,

invisible as a mutation,
an echo of what the light
said, when nobody
attended; an impression

of eyes, quicker than
to be caught loooking, but taken
on trust like flowers in the
dark country towards which we go.

R.S. Thomas

As a Welsh clergyman, Thomas would have attended quite a few - and should know.

FUNERAL

They stand about conversing
In dark clumps, less beautiful than trees.
What have they come here to mourn?
There was death, yes; but death's brother
Sin, is of more importance.
Shabbily the teeth gleam,
Sharpening themselves on reputations
That were firm once, On the cheap coffin
The earth falls more cleanly than tears,
What are these red faces for?
This incidence of pious catharr
At the grave's edge? He has returned
Where he he belongs; this is acknowledged
By all but the lonely few
Making amends for the heart's coldness
He had from them, grudging a little
The simple splendour of the wreath
Of words the church lays on him.

R.S. Thomas

This poem describes the restrictive life in the country at that time.

COUNTRY CHILD

Dropped without joy from the gaunt womb he lies,
Maturing in his place against his parents' ageing;
The slow scene unfolds before his luckless eyes
To the puckered window, where the cold storm's raging
Curtains the world, and the grey curlew cries,
Uttering a grief too sharp for the breast's assuaging.

So the days will drift into months and the months to years,
Moulding his mouth to silence, his hand to the plough;
And the world will grow to a few lean acres of grass,
And an orchard of stars in the night's unscaleable boughs.
But see at the bare field's edge, where he'll surely pass,
An ash tree wantons with sensuous body and smooth,
Provocative limbs to play the whore to his youth
Till, hurled with hot haste into manhood, he woos and weds
A wife half wild, half shy of the ancestral bed,
The crumbling house, and the whisperers on the stairs.

R.S Thomas

A suggestion: If you are enjoying these poems, why not go out and buy a book? There are several collections available from Amazon, Waterstones and other booksellers. None are cheap, but you will have something permanent to keep and to pass on to your children or grandchildren.

"Hello God . . It's me"

CALLING

The telephone is the fruit
of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. We may call
everyone up on it but God.

To do that is to declare
that he is far off. Dialling
zero is nothing other
than the negation of his presence.

So many times I have raised
the receiver, listening to
that smooth sound that is technology's
purring: and the temptation

has come to experiment
with the code which would put
me through to the divine
snarl at the perimeter of such tameness.

R.S. Thomas

So this is the Garden of Eden?

And having built it
I set about furnishing it
To my taste: first moss, then grass
Annually renewed, and animals
To divert me: faces stared in
From the wild. I thought up the flowers
Then birds. I found the bacteria
Sheltering in primordial
Darkness and called them forth
To the light. Quickly the earth
Teemed. Yet still an absence
Disturbed me. I slept and dreamed
Of a likeness, fashioning it,
When I woke, to a slow
Music; in love with it
For itself, giving it freedom
To love me; risking the disappointment.

R.S. Thomas ("Making")

After yesterday's 'simple' poem, here is something a little more thoughtful.

What would you like to take from the Window of Life?

THE WINDOW

Say he is any man
anywhere set before the shop window
of life, full of comestibles
and jewels; to put out his hand
is to come up against
glass; to break it is
to injure himself,
Shall he turn
poet and acquire them
in the imagination, gospeller
and extol himself for his abstension
from them?
What if he is not
called? I would put the manufacturers
there. Let them see the eyes
staring in, be splashed with the blood
of the shop-breakers; let them live
on the poet's diet, on the pocket-money
of the priest.
I see the blinds
going down in Europe, over the
whole world: the rich with everything to
sell, the poor with nothing to buy it with.

R.S. Thomas

Today - a more simple poem from R.S. Thomas.

LOOKING GLASS

There is a game I play
with a mirror, approaching
it when I am not there,
as though to take by surprise

the self that is my familiar. It
is in vain. Like one eternally
in ambush, fast or slow
as I may raise my head, it raises

its own, catching me in the act,
disarming me by acquaintance,
looking full into my face as often
as I try looking at it askance.

R.S. Thomas

This poem may not be as simple as it first appears.

The mirror never lies!

HEBREWS 12:29 *

If you had made it smaller
we would have fallen over; larger
and we would have never caught up
with our clocks. Just right
for us to know things are there
without seeing them? Forgive
us the contempt our lenses
breed in us. To be brought near
stars and microbes do us no good.
chrysalises all, that pupate
idle thoughts. We have stared and stared, and not stared
truth out, and your name has occurred
on and off with its accompanying
shadow. Who was it said: Fear
not, when fear is an ingredient
of our knowledge of you? The mistake
we make, looking deep into the fire,
is to confer features upon a presence
that is not human; to expect love
from a kiss whose only property is to consume.

R.S. Thomas

(* "For our God is a consuming fire")

For God so loved the world, that
he gave his only begotten Son . .

THE COMING

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

R.S. Thomas

(But they cried out, "Take him away, take him away, crucify him. ... Away with him! Crucify him!")

I read recently that R.S. Thomas seems always to have kept at least one step ahead of his readers.

Perhaps you can do better.

RETROSPECT

As they became
cleverer, they became worse -
So history publishes
Its contempt for the scholars

who can't spell. One thing
I remember: There was
a man time should have
bowed down to: bones of a bird,

great brain, whose argument broke
on the big fist; while a girl wept
her confetti tears,
bellowing to be deflowered.

R.S. Thomas

R.S. Thomas again comments about prayer.

Most times it is unanswered, but perhaps one day it may work.

FOLK TALE

Prayers like gravel
Flung at the sky's
window, hoping to attract
the loved one's
attention. But without
visible plaits to let
down for the believer
to climb up,
to what purpose open
that far casement?
I would
have refrained long since
but that peering once
through my locked fingers
I thought that I detected
the movement of a curtain.

R.S. Thomas

Can YOU identify with this?

A LIFE

Lived long; much fear, less
courage. Bottom in love's school
of his class; time's reason
too far back to be known.
Good on his knees, yielding,
vertical, to petty temptations.
A mouth thoughts escaped
from unfledged. Where two
were company, he the unwanted
third. A Narcissus tortured
by the whisperers behind
the mirror. Visionary only
in his perception of an horizon
beyond the horizon. Doubtful
of God, too pusillanimous
to deny him. Saving his face
in verse from the humiliations prose
inflicted on him. One of life's
conscientious objectors, conceding
nothing to the propaganda of death
but a compulsion to volunteer.

R.S. Thomas

APPROACHES

We began by being very close.
Moving nearer I found
he was further off, presence
being replaced by shadow;

the nearer the light, the larger
the shadow. Imagine the torment
of the discovery that is growing
small. Is there a leak somewhere

in the mind that would comprehend
him? Not even to be able to say,
pointing: Here Godhead was spilled.
I had a belief once that even

a human being left his stain
in places where he had occurred.
Now it is all clinical light
pouring into the interstices

where mystery could linger
questioning credentials of the divine
fossil, sterilising our thought
for its launching into its own outer space.

R.S. Thomas

It is surprising how many clergymen are insecure in their faith and live in a continuous state of doubt and uncertainty.

Perhaps you will do better.

REVISION

Heaven affords
unlimited accommodation
to the simple-minded.
Pardon,
hymn-writers, if levity deputises
for an Amen. Too much
has depended on the exigencies
of rhyme. You never
improved on 'odd' as the antiphon
to a heavenly father.
Tell
me, is truth's victory followed
by an armistice?
How many
of man's prayers assume
an eavesdropping God
A bishop
called for an analysis
of the bread and wine. I being
no chemist play my recording
of his silence over
and over to myself only.

R.S. Thomas

This poem is for Peter, a fly-fisherman friend, who admires trout, enjoys catching them, sometimes eats them, but more often puts them back unharmed.

He has enjoyed fishing as a therapy to help overcome a serious illness.

SONG FOR GWYDION

When I was a child and the soft flesh was forming
Quietly as snow on the bare bough of bone,
My father brought me trout from the green river
From whose chill lips the water song had flown.

Dull grew their eyes, the beautiful, blithe garland
Of stipple faded, as light shocked the brain;
They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted,
A young god, ignorant of the blood's stain.

R.S. Thomas

Note: You can read about Peter's fly-fishing exploits at:

www.flyfishing.blog.co.uk

"No Adults" - The private make-believe world of the very young.

CHILDREN'S SONG

We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.

R.S. Thomas

Yesterday we had a description of apparently loveless domesticity.

Today Thomas brings back the loving.

THE HEARTH

In front of the fire
With you, the folk song
Of the wind in the chimney and the sparks'
Embroidery of the soot - eternity
Is here in this small room,
In intervals that our love
Widens; and outside
Of time, travellers
To a new Bethlehem, statesmen
And scientists with their hands full
Of the gifts that destroy.

R.S. Thomas

In this poem Thomas paints a picture of wifely domesticity.

She may be content, but patently he is not!

THE WAY OF IT

With her fingers she turns paint
into flowers, with her body
flowers into a remembrance
of herself. She is at work
always, mending the garment
of our marriage, foraging
like a bird for something
for us to eat. If there are thorns
in my life, it is she who
will press her breast to them and sing.

Her words, when she would scold,
are too sharp. She is busy
after for hours rubbing smiles
into the wounds. I saw her,
when young, and spread the panoply
of my feathers instinctively
to engage her. She was not deceived,
but accepted me as a girl
will under a thin moon
in love's absence as someone
she could build a home with
for her imagined child.

R.S. Thomas

With R.S. Thomas, you can't get away from the Church or Welsh characters for long.

Here he tells of a Deacon, who doesn't seem able to control his wandering thoughts in Chapel!

CHAPEL DEACON

Who put that crease in your soul,
Davies, ready this fine morning
For the staid chapel, where the Book's frown
Sobers the sunlight? Who taught you to pray
And scheme at once, your eyes turning
Skyward, while your swift mind weighs
Your heifer's chances in the next town's
Fair on Thursday? Are your heart's coals
Kindled for God, or is the burning
Of your lean cheeks because you sit
Too near that girl's smouldering gaze?
Tell me, Davies, for the faint breeze
From heaven freshens and I roll in it,
Who taught you your deft poise?

R.S. Thomas

Here Thomas, with some disillusionment, comments on the development of a poet.

Not all make the grade.

For the first twenty years you are still growing
Bodily that is: as a poet, of course,
You are not born yet. It's the next ten
You cut your teeth on to emerge smirking
For your brash courtship of the muse.
You will take seriously those first affairs
With young poems, but no attachments
Formed then but come to shame you,
When love has changed to a grave service
Of a cold queen.

From forty on
You learn from the sharp cuts and jags
Of poems that have come to pieces
In your crude hands how to assemble
With more skill the arbitrary parts
Of ode or sonnet, while time fosters
A new impulse to conceal your wounds
From her and from a bold public,
Given to pry.

You are old now
As years reckon, but in that slower
World of the poet you are just coming
To sad manhood, knowing the smile
On her proud face is not for you.

R.S. Thomas

(To a Young Poet)

I have commented before that it is often difficult, or even impossible to find God in church and we must look elsewhere for him.

Apparently, he is not attracted to candles!

THE EMPTY CHURCH

They laid this stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
as though he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there.
Ah, he had burned himself
before in the human flame
and escaped, leaving the reason
torn. He will not come any more

to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still
striking my prayers on a stone
heart? Is it in hope one
of them will ignite yet and throw
on its illuminated walls the shadow
of someone greater than I can understand?

R.S. Thomas

Over the past two days we have seen R.S. Thomas questioning the efficacy of prayer.

What has happened? Has Thomas lost his faith? Or is he just facing reality?

THE ISLAND

And God said, I will build a church here
And cause this people to worship me,
And afflict them with poverty and sickness
In return for centuries of hard work
And patience.
And its walls shall be hard as
Their hearts, and its windows let in the light
Grudgingly, as their minds do, and the priest’s words be drowned
By the wind’s caterwauling. All this I will do,
Said God, and watch the bitterness in their eyes
Grow, and their lips suppurate with
Their prayers. And their women shall bring forth
On my altar, and I will choose the best
Of them to be thrown back into the sea.

And that was only on one island.

R.S. Thomas

R.S. Thomas continues with his theme of no response to prayer and concludes that it is now too late for change.

HERE

I am a man now.
Pass your hand over my brow.
You can feel the place where the brains grow.

I am like a tree,
From my top boughs I can see
The footprints that led up to me.

There is blood in my veins
That has run clear of the stain
Contracted in so many loins.

Why, then, are my hands red
With the blood of so many dead?
Is this where I was misled?

Why are my hands this way
That they will not do as I say?
Does no God hear when I pray?

I have nowhere to go
The swift satellites show
The clock of my whole being is slow,

It is too late to start
For destinations not of the heart.
I must stay here with my hurt.

R.S. Thomas

As you know, R.S. Thomas was a Welsh Anglican clergyman.

When does prayer work?

PETITION

And I standing in the shade
Have seen it a thousand times
Happen: first theft, then murder;
Rape; the rueful acts
Of the blind hand. I have said
New prayers, or said the old
In a new way. Seeking the poem
In the pain, I have learned
Silence is best, paying for it
With my conscience. I am eyes
Merely, witnessing virtue's
Defeat; seeing the young born
Fair, knowing the cancer
Awaits them. One thing I have asked
Of the disposer of the issues
Of life: that truth should defer
To beauty. It was not granted.

R.S. Thomas