by R. S. Thomas
Sea-birds and the tide races
Snarling. And the dark hull bites
At the water, crunching it
To small glass, as the men chew
Their tobacco, cleaning their mind
On wind, trusting the horizon’s
Logic.
These are the crusted men
Of the sea, measuring time
By tide-fall, knowing the changeless
Seasons, the lasting honeysuckle
Of the sea. They are lean and hard
And alert, and while our subjects
Increase, burdening us
With their detail, these keep to the one
Fact of the sea, its pitilessness, its beauty.
Circles
A man threw some brushings away.
A wren found them and built in them.
A rat found the young when they were hatched.
The rat came, stealing the man’s bread,
And lies now, a cupboard for maggots.
It is man makes the first move and the last.
He throws things away and they return to him.
He seeks things that always withdraw
And finds them waiting on his return.
He takes his departure from God
And is as trash thrown away.
But a dream finds him and builds in him,
And death comes and eats up the dreamer’s
Brood. And still it is out of a man
Death is born; so before death
Man is, and after death
There is more man, and the dream outlasts
Death, and the dreamer will never die.
Experiments
I was not unhappy
At school, made something
Of the lessons over the gold heads
Of the girls. Love, said
The letters on
The blackboard. Love, I wrote down
In my book.
There was one room,
However, that was full of
Jars, test-tubes
And wet sinks. Poisonous smells
Came from it, rumours,
Reports. The pupils who
Worked there had glasses and
Tall skulls. They were pale and
Looked at us as though we were part
Of a boring experiment.
The Country
About living in the country?
I yawn; that step, for instance –
No need to look up – Evans
On his way to the fields, where he hoes
Up one row of mangolds and down
The next one. You needn’t wonder
What goes on in his mind, there is nothing
Going on there; the unemployment
Of the lobes is established. His small dole
Is kindness of the passers-by
Who mister him, who read an answer
To problems in the way his speech
Comes haltingly, and his eyes reflect
Stillness. I would say to them
About living in the country, peace
Can deafen one, beauty surprise
No longer. There is only the thud
Of the slow foot up the long lane
At morning and back at night.
Castaway
I have no name for today
But itself. Long ago
I lost count of the days.
Castaways have no mirror
But the sea, that leaves its wrinkles
On themselves, too. Every morning
I see how the sun comes up
Unpublicised; there are no news
On this beach. What I do
Neither the tall birds on the shore,
Nor the animals in the bush
Care about. They have all time
And no time, each one about
Its business, foraging, breeding.
I thought that they had respect
For a human. Here there are creatures
That jostle me, others that crawl
On my loved flesh. I am the food
They were born for, endlessly shrilling
Their praises. I have seen the bones
In the jungle, that are the cradle
We came from and go back to.
Seaside
And the sea opens its bag
On the sand. I didn’t ask
To be born, screams the child,
Paddling. The grown girl
Smiles, helping herself
To its trinkets. The men leer.
On the horizon the shark’s
Fin passes, a dark sail.
The Sea
They wash their hands in it.
The salt turns to soap
In their hands. Wearing it
At their wrists, they make bracelets
Of it; it runs in beads
On their jackets. A child’s
Plaything? It has hard whips
That it cracks, and knuckles
To pummel you. It scrubs
And scours; it chews rocks
To sand; its embraces
Leave you without breath. Mostly
It is a stomach, where bones,
Wrecks, continents are digested.
I
I imagine it: Two people,
A bed; I was not
There. They dreamed of me?
No, they sought themselves
In the other, You,
They breathed. I overheard
From afar. I was nine months
Coming … nearer, nearer;
The ugliness of the place
Daunted. I hung back
In the dark, but was cast out,
Howling. Love, they promised;
It will be love and sunlight
And joy. I took their truth
In my mouth and mumbled it
For a while, till my teeth
Grew. Ah, they cried, so you would,
Would you? I knew the cold
Of the world and preferred warmth
To freedom. I let the cord
Hang, the lawn my
Horizon. Girls came
And stared at me, but her eyes
Cowed me. Duty,
They shrilled. I saw how their lives
Frayed, and praised myself
For emotion, swallowing
My snivel.
Years went by;
I escaped, but never outgrew
The initial contagion.
The Smile
My mother prayed that I should have the sweet tooth.
My father said that I should have the big fist.
And life, lingering somewhere by,
Smiled on me, giving me neither.
Asides
And at Carcassonne I was looking
At the cats on the river
Tow-path. How they ran,
Male and female, faster
Than the smooth river through
Hoops of light; so I forgot
The castle and the long wars
Of kings and princes and
The philosopher’s question, even
My own need for
Conviction. And the mice sang
In the dew, as though they agreed with me.
Lost Christmas
He is alone, it is Christmas.
Up the hill go three trees, the three kings.
There is a star also
Over the dark manger. But where is the Child?
Pity him. He has come far
Like the trees, matching their patience
With his. But the mind was before
Him on the long road. The manger is empty.
If You Can Call it Living
In Wales there are
no crocodiles, but the tears
continue to flow from
their slimed sources. Women
with white hair and strawberry
faces peer at you from behind
curtains; wo
bbling sopranos
split the chapels; the clerks undress
the secretaries with
their lean eyes.
Who will employ
the loafers at the street
corners, choking over
the joke’s phlegm?
Anything to
sell? cries the tourist
to the native rummaging among
the remnants of his self-respect.
Somewhere to Go for a Laugh
I am not from these parts.
My auntie’s is the next house
but one in the next village
but one in the next
county. If you hear me use
English, it is not for you to judge
the accent. I have ways, too,
of getting about; my nose tells
the seasons, as your calendars do.
I am more equal; in twelve towns
under the grinding of the shillings
I have heard the muse purr. My father
was after all one of those born
to preferment – Rural Dean
of the Bottom Hundred I have known him called.
To Pay for His Keep
So this was on the way
to a throne! He looked round
at the perspiring ranks
of ageing respectables:
police, tradesmen, councillors,
rigid with imagined
loyalty; and beyond them at
the town with its mean streets and
pavements filthy with
dog shit.
The castle was
huge. All that dead weight
of the past, that overloading
of the law’s mounting
equipment! A few medals
would do now. He permitted
himself a small smile,
sipping at it in the mind’s
coolness.
And never noticed,
because of the dust raised
by the prayers of the fagged
clergy, that far hill
in the sun with the long line
of its trees climbing
it like a procession
of young people, young as himself.
He Lies Down to be Counted
And in Tregaron Henry Richard
still freezes, cast in shame to preside
over the pacifism of a servile people.
Thomas Charles, too, has seen the Bible
petrified. Nothing can stir the pages
of the book he holds; not even the draught from Tryweryn.
In our country you make your way
from monument to monument. Besides
the villages’ and the towns’
statues, there are the memories of those others
who gave their lives for the freedom
to make money, the innumerable Joneses
and Owens, who might have brought our blood
to the boil; who are clothed now
in the indiscriminate mufti of the soil.
His Condescensions Are Short-Lived
I don’t know, he said. I feel sorry
for the English – a fine people
in some ways, but victims
of their traditions. All those tanks
and guns; the processions
that go nowhere; the medals
and gold braid; the government’s
yearly awards; the replenishment
of the clapped ranks of
the peerage. Democracy is the tip
the rich and the well-born give
for your homage.
I admired him
there, as he sat nonchalantly
in his chair, flicking the ash from
his cigarette – supplied, by the way,
as most things in Wales are
supplied, by English wholesalers.
The Earth Does its Best for Him
The paintings are under glass,
or in dry rooms it is difficult
to breathe in; they are tired
of returning the hard stare
of eyes. The sculptures are smooth
from familiarity. There is a smell
of dust, the precipitation
of culture from dead skies.
I return to Lleyn,
repository of the condescension
of time. Through the car’s
open windows the scent of hay
comes. It is incense, the seasonally
renewed offering of the live earth.
He Agrees with Henry Ford
Llywelyn? Old hat.
Glyndwr? A con man,
Iolo licking his arse
for a doublet, for his next
meal.
Rusty their armour,
yellow their bones, let them
brag in the safety of the dry
libraries. Honours forbid
that they should start their nonsense.
Rising sixty, my post-war
credits are due, my feet
are towards the electric
fire; my favourite programme
begins. I have drawn the curtains
on the raw sky where our history
bleeds, where Cilgwri’s ousel
on my ramshackle aerial
keeps the past’s goal
against the balls of tomorrow.
It Hurts Him to Think
The decree went forth
to destroy the language – ‘not cariad’
they said, ‘love’. The nursing future
saw the tightening lips
of the English drawn on the hard sky
to the east. ‘You can have the job,
if you ask for it in the right
words.’ ‘Come buy, come buy,’
tolled the bells of the churches
in the new towns. The Welsh
put on their best clothes
and took their produce
to market, and brought it back
with them, unsold. ‘We want
nothing from you but your
land.’ The heiresses fell
for the velvet businessmen
of the shires. The peasantry
saw their pastures fenced in
with the bones of heroes. The
industrialists came, burrowing
in the corpse of a nation
for its congealed blood. I was
born into the squalor of
their feeding and sucked their speech
in with my mother’s
infected milk, so that whatever
I throw up now is still theirs.
Emerging
Not as in the old days I pray,
God. My life is not what it was.
Yours, too, accepts the presence of
the machine? Once I would have asked
healing. I go now to be doctored,
to drink sinlessly of the blood
of my brother, to lend my flesh
as manuscript of the great poem
of the scalpel. I would have knelt
long, wrestling with you, wearing
you down. Hear my prayer, Lord, hear
my prayer. As though you were deaf, myriads
of mortals have kept up their shrill
cry, explaining your silence by
their unfitness.
It begins to appear
this is not what prayer is about.
It is the annihilation of difference,
the consciousness of myself in you,
of you in me; the emerging
from the adolescence of nature
into the adult geometry
of the mind. I begin to recognise
you anew, God of form and number.
There are questions we are the solution
to, others whose echoes we must expand
to contain. Circular as our way
is, it leads not back to that snake-haunted
garden, but onward to the tall city
of glass that is the laboratory of the spirit.
The Hand
It was a hand. God looked at it
and looked away. There was a coldness
about his heart, as though the hand
clasped it. As at the end
of a dark tunnel, he saw cities
the hand would build, engines
that it would raze them with. His sight
dimmed. Tempted to undo the joints
of the fingers, he picked it up.
But the hand wrestled with him. ‘Tell
me your name,’ it cried, ‘and I will write it
in bright gold. Are there not deeds
to be done, children to make, poems
to be written? The world
is without meaning, awaiting
my coming.’ But God, feeling the nails
in his side, the unnerving warmth
of the contact, fought on in
silence. This was the long war with himself
always foreseen, the question not
to be answered. What is the hand
for? The immaculate conception
preceding the delivery
of the first tool? ‘I let you go,’
he said, ‘but without blessing.
Messenger to the mixed things
of your making, tell them I am.’
The Word
A pen appeared, and the god said:
‘Write what it is to be
man.’ And my hand hovered
long over the bare page,
until there, like footprints
of the lost traveller, letters
took shape on the page’s
blankness, and I spelled out
the word ‘lonely’. And my hand moved
to erase it; but the voices
of all those waiting at life’s
window cried out loud: ‘It is true.’
Out There
It is another country.
There is no speech there such
as we know; even the colours
are different.
When the residents use their eyes,
it is not shapes they see but the distance
between them. If they go,
it is not in a traveller’s
usual direction, but sideways and
out through the mirror of a refracted
timescale. If you met them early,
you would recognise them by an absence