Collected Poems 1945-1990

by R. S. Thomas

  Yet no bridge joins her own

  World with yours, all you can do

  Is lean kindly across the abyss

  To hear words that were once wise.

  Too Late

  I would have spared you this, Prytherch;

  You were like a child to me.

  I would have seen you poor and in rags,

  Rather than wealthy and not free.

  The rain and wind are hard masters;

  I have known you wince under their lash.

  But there was comfort for you at the day’s end

  Dreaming over the warm ash

  Of a turf fire on a hill farm.

  Contented with your accustomed ration

  Of bread and bacon, and drawing your strength

  From membership of an old nation

  Not given to beg. But look at yourself

  Now, a servant hired to flog

  The life out of the slow soil,

  Or come obediently as a dog

  To the pound’s whistle. Can’t you see

  Behind the smile on the times’ face

  The cold brain of the machine

  That will destroy you and your race?

  Hireling

  Cars pass him by; he’ll never own one.

  Men won’t believe in him for this.

  Let them come into the hills

  And meet him wandering a road,

  Fenced with rain, as I have now;

  The wind feathering his hair;

  The sky’s ruins, gutted with fire

  Of the late sun, smouldering still.

  Nothing is his, neither the land

  Nor the land’s flocks. Hired to live

  On hills too lonely, sharing his hearth

  With cats and hens, he has lost all

  Property but the grey ice

  Of a face splintered by life’s stone.

  Poet’s Address to the Businessmen

  Gentlemen all

  At the last crumbfall,

  The set of glasses,

  The moist eye,

  I rise to speak

  Of things irrelevant:

  The poem shut,

  Uneasy fossil,

  In the mind’s rock;

  The growth of winter

  In the thick wood

  Of history; music

  We might have heard

  In the heart’s cloisters.

  I speak of wounds

  Not dealt us; blows

  That left no bruises

  On the white table

  Cloth. Forgive me

  The tongue’s failure,

  In all this leanness

  Of time, to arrive

  Nearer the bone.

  Those Others

  A gofid gwerin gyfan

  Yn fy nghri fel taerni tân.

  Dewi Emrys

  I have looked long at this land,

  Trying to understand

  My place in it – why,

  With each fertile country

  So free of its room,

  This was the cramped womb

  At last took me in

  From the void of unbeing.

  Hate takes a long time

  To grow in, and mine

  Has increased from birth;

  Not for the brute earth

  That is strong here and clean

  And plain in its meaning

  As none of the books are

  That tell but of the war

  Of heart with head, leaving

  The wild birds to sing

  The best songs; I find

  This hate’s for my own kind,

  For men of the Welsh race

  Who brood with dark face

  Over their thin navel

  To learn what to sell;

  Yet not for them all either,

  There are still those other

  Castaways on a sea

  Of grass, who call to me,

  Clinging to their doomed farms;

  Their hearts though rough are warm

  And firm, and their slow wake

  Through time bleeds for our sake.

  Portrait

  You never asked what he was like,

  That man, Prytherch. Did you class him

  With other labourers, breaking the wild

  Mare of the soil with bare knuckles

  And gnarled thighs, knowing him shut

  In cold arenas between hedges

  With no audience, a man for whom

  The stars’ bridle was hung too high?

  He was in rags; you were right there.

  But the blood was fanned by the sharp draught

  Of winter into a huge blaze

  In the cheeks’ grate, and eyes that you might

  Have fancied brown from their long gazing

  Downward were of a hard blue,

  So shrill they would not permit the ear

  To hear what the lips’ slobber intended.

  Hyddgen

  The place, Hyddgen;

  The time, the fifth

  Century since Glyn Dŵr

  Was here with his men.

  He beat the English.

  Does it matter now

  In the rain? The English

  Don’t want to come:

  Summer country.

  The Welsh too:

  A barren victory.

  Look at those sheep,

  On such small bones

  The best mutton,

  But not for him,

  The hireling shepherd.

  History goes on;

  On the rock the lichen

  Records it: no mention

  Of them, of us.

  Lore

  Job Davies, eighty-five

  Winters old, and still alive

  After the slow poison

  And treachery of the seasons.

  Miserable? Kick my arse!

  It needs more than the rain’s hearse,

  Wind-drawn, to pull me off

  The great perch of my laugh.

  What’s living but courage?

  Paunch full of hot porridge,

  Nerves strengthened with tea,

  Peat-black, dawn found me

  Mowing where the grass grew,

  Bearded with golden dew.

  Rhythm of the long scythe

  Kept this tall frame lithe.

  What to do? Stay green.

  Never mind the machine,

  Whose fuel is human souls.

  Live large, man, and dream small.

  Mother and Son

  At nine o’clock in the morning

  My son said to me:

  Mother, he said, from the wet streets

  The clouds are removed and the sun walks

  Without shoes on the warm pavements.

  There are girls biddable at the corners

  With teeth cleaner than your white plates;

  The sharp clatter of your dishes

  Is less pleasant to me than their laughter.

  The day is building; before its bright walls

  Fall in dust, let me go

  Beyond the front garden without you

  To find glasses unstained by tears,

  To find mirrors that do not reproach

  My smooth face; to hear above the town’s

  Din life roaring in the veins.

  Pharisee.

  Twentieth Century

  Lord, I was not as most men.

  When they were working, fighting, drinking,

  I was in the greenwood, thinking

  Thought to the bone. Down through my pen

  The heart’s poetry like blood ran.

  When some were in their cars, swanking,

  I was on my two knees, thanking

  For such grace as I had then.

  They felt so, too. Many the jests

  From hale lungs and deep chests,

  From broad bodies too well to care.

  My long face, my long hair

  Took them in;
smugly they laughed,

  Souls guttering in the grave’s draught.

  A Welsh Testament

  All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?

  I spoke the tongue that was passed on

  To me in the place I happened to be,

  A place huddled between grey walls

  Of cloud for at least half the year.

  My word for heaven was not yours.

  The word for hell had a sharp edge

  Put on it by the hand of the wind

  Honing, honing with a shrill sound

  Day and night. Nothing that Glyn Dŵr

  Knew was armour against the rain’s

  Missiles. What was descent from him?

  Even God had a Welsh name:

  We spoke to him in the old language;

  He was to have a peculiar care

  For the Welsh people. History showed us

  He was too big to be nailed to the wall

  Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him

  Between the boards of a black book.

  Yet men sought us despite this.

  My high cheek-bones, my length of skull

  Drew them as to a rare portrait

  By a dead master. I saw them stare

  From their long cars, as I passed knee-deep

  In ewes and wethers. I saw them stand

  By the thorn hedges, watching me string

  The far flocks on a shrill whistle.

  And always there was their eyes’ strong

  Pressure on me: You are Welsh, they said;

  Speak to us so; keep your fields free

  Of the smell of petrol, the loud roar

  Of hot tractors; we must have peace

  And quietness.

  Is a museum

  Peace? I asked. Am I the keeper

  Of the heart’s relics, blowing the dust

  In my own eyes? I am a man;

  I never wanted the drab rôle

  Life assigned me, an actor playing

  To the past’s audience upon a stage

  Of earth and stone; the absurd label

  Of birth, of race hanging askew

  About my shoulders. I was in prison

  Until you came; your voice was a key

  Turning in the enormous lock

  Of hopelessness. Did the door open

  To let me out or yourselves in?

  Which?

  And Prytherch – was he a real man,

  Rolling his pain day after day

  Up life’s hill? Was he a survival

  Of a lost past, wearing the times’

  Shabbier casts-off, refusing to change

  His lean horse for the quick tractor?

  Or was a wish to have him so

  Responsible for his frayed shape?

  Could I have said he was the scholar

  Of the fields’ pages he turned more slowly

  Season by season, or nature’s fool.

  Born to blur with his moist eye

  The clear passages of a book

  You came to finger with deft touch?

  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.

  Alpine

  About mountains it is useless to argue,

  You have either been up or you haven’t;

  The view from half-way is nobody’s view.

  The best flowers are mostly at the top

  Under a ledge, nourished by wind.

  A sense of smell is of less importance

  Than a sense of balance, walking on clouds

  Through holes in which you can see the earth

  Like a rich man through the eye of a needle.

  The mind has its own level to find.

  The Maker

  So he said then: I will make the poem,

  I will make it now. He took pencil,

  The mind’s cartridge, and blank paper,

  And drilled his thoughts to the slow beat

  Of the blood’s drum; and there it formed

  On the white surface and went marching

  Onward through time, while the spent cities

  And dry hearts smoked in its wake.

  A Line from St David’s

  I am sending you this letter,

  Something for neo-Edwardians

  Of a test-tube age to grow glum about

  In their conditioned libraries.

  As I came here by way of Plwmp,

  There were hawkweeds in the hedges;

  Nature had invested all her gold

  In the industry of the soil.

  There were larks, too, like a fresh chorus

  Of dew, and I thought, remembering Dewi

  The water-drinker, the way back

  Is not so far as the way forward.

  Here the cathedral’s bubble of stone

  Is still unpricked by the mind’s needle,

  And the wall lettuce in the crevices

  Is as green now as when Giraldus

  Altered the colour of his thought

  By drinking from the Welsh fountain ...

  I ramble; what I wanted to say

  Was that the day has a blue lining

  Partly of sky, partly of sea;

  That the old currents are in the grass,

  Though rust has becalmed the plough.

  Somewhere a man sharpens a scythe;

  A child watches him from the brink

  Of his own speech, and this is of more

  Importance than all the visitors keeping

  A spry saint asleep in his tomb.

  Country Cures

  There are places, where you might have been sent

  To learn patience, to make your soul

  In long hours by the poor light

  Of a few, pale leaves on a tree

  In autumn or a flower in spring;

  Lost parishes, where the grass keeps

  No register and life is bare

  Of all but the cold fact of the wind.

  I know those places and the lean men,

  Whose collars fasten them by the neck

  To loneliness; as I go by,

  I hear them pacing from room to room

  Of their gaunt houses; or see their white

  Faces setting on a blank day.

  Funeral

  They stand about conversing

  In dark clumps, less beautiful than trees.

  What have they come here to mourn?

  There was a 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 catarrh

  At the grave’s edge? He has returned

  Where 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.

 
; To a Young Poet

  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.

  Sorry

  Dear parents,

  I forgive you my life,

  Begotten in a drab town,

  The intention was good;

  Passing the street now,

  I see still the remains of sunlight.

  It was not the bone buckled;

  You gave me enough food

  To renew myself.

  It was the mind’s weight

  Kept me bent, as I grew tall.

  It was not your fault.

  What should have gone on,

  Arrow aimed from a tried bow

  At a tried target, has turned back,

  Wounding itself

  With questions you had not asked.

  Becoming

  Not for long.

  After the dark

  The dawning.

  After the first light

  The sun.

  After the calm the wind,

  Creasing the water.

  After the silence

  Sound,

  Sound of the wild birds,

  And movement,

  The fox and the hare.

  And all these at one,

  Part of the tearless content

  Of the eye’s lens.

  But over the sunlight

  Shadow

  Of the first man.

  Welsh