Collected Poems 1945-1990

by R. S. Thomas

  I dreamed of. I am saved by music

  From the emptiness of this place

  Of despair. As the melody rises

  From nothing, their mouths take up the tune,

  And the roof listens. I call on God

  In the after silence, and my shadow

  Wrestles with him upon a wall

  Of plaster, that has all the nation’s

  Hardness in it. They see me thrown

  Without movement of their oblique eyes.

  Blondes

  They pass me with bland looks.

  It is the simplicity of their lives

  I ache for: prettiness and a soft heart, no problems

  Not to be brought to life size

  By a kiss or a smile. I see them walking

  Up long streets with the accuracy of shuttles

  At work, threads crossed to make a pattern

  Unknown to them. A thousand curtains

  Are parted to welcome home

  The husbands who have overdrawn

  On their blank trust, giving them children

  To play with, a jingle of small change

  For their pangs. The tear-laden tree

  Of a poet strikes no roots in their hearts.

  The Dance

  She is young. Have I the right

  Even to name her? Child,

  It is not love I offer

  Your quick limbs, your eyes;

  Only the barren homage

  Of an old man whom time

  Crucifies. Take my hand

  A moment in the dance,

  Ignoring its sly pressure,

  The dry rut of age,

  And lead me under the boughs

  Of innocence. Let me smell

  My youth again in your hair.

  Who?

  Someone must have thought of putting me here;

  It wasn’t myself did it.

  What do I find to my taste?

  Annually the grass comes up green;

  The earth keeps its rotary motion.

  There is loveliness growing, where might have been truth’s

  Bitterer berries. The reason tempers

  Most of the heart’s stormier moods.

  But there’s an underlying despair

  Of what should be most certain in my life:

  This hard image that is reflected

  In mirrors and in the eyes of my friends.

  It is for this that the air comes in thin

  At the nostril, and dries to a crust.

  The Face

  When I close my eyes, I can see it.

  That bare hill with the man ploughing,

  Corrugating that brown roof

  Under a hard sky. Under him is the farm,

  Anchored in its grass harbour;

  And below that the valley

  Sheltering its few folk,

  With the school and the inn and the church,

  The beginning, middle and end

  Of their slow journey above ground.

  He is never absent, but like a slave

  Answers to the mind’s bidding,

  Endlessly ploughing, as though autumn

  Were the one season he knew.

  Sometimes he pauses to look down

  To the grey farmhouse, but no signals

  Cheer him; there is no applause

  For his long wrestling with the angel

  Of no name. I can see his eye

  That expects nothing, that has the rain’s

  Colourlessness. His hands are broken

  But not his spirit. He is like bark

  Weathering on the tree of his kind.

  He will go on; that much is certain.

  Beneath him tenancies of the fields

  Will change; machinery turn

  All to noise. But on the walls

  Of the mind’s gallery that face

  With the hills framing it will hang

  Unglorified, but stern like the soil.

  Schoonermen

  Great in this,

  They made small ships do

  Big things, leaping hurdles

  Of the stiff sea, horse against horses

  In the tide race.

  What has Rio

  To do with Pwllheli? Ask winds

  Bitter for ever

  With their black shag. Ask the quays

  Stained with spittle.

  Four days out

  With bad cargo

  Fever took the crew;

  The mate and boatswain,

  Peering in turn

  Through the spray’s window,

  Brought her home. Memory aches

  In the bones’ rigging. If tales were tall,

  Waves were taller.

  From long years

  In a salt school, caned by brine,

  They came landward

  With the eyes of boys,

  The Welsh accent

  Thick in their sails.

  In Church

  Often I try

  To analyse the quality

  Of its silences. Is this where God hides

  From my searching? I have stopped to listen,

  After the few people have gone,

  To the air recomposing itself

  For vigil. It has waited like this

  Since the stones grouped themselves about it.

  These are the hard ribs

  Of a body that our prayers have failed

  To animate. Shadows advance

  From their corners to take possession

  Of places the light held

  For an hour. The bats resume

  Their business. The uneasiness of the pews

  Ceases. There is no other sound

  In the darkness but the sound of a man

  Breathing, testing his faith

  On emptiness, nailing his questions

  One by one to an untenanted cross.

  Careers

  Fifty-two years,

  most of them taken in

  growing or in the

  illusion of it – what does the mem-

  ory number as one’s

  property? The broken elbow?

  the lost toy? The pain has

  vanished, but the soft flesh

  that suffered it is mine still.

  There is a house with

  a face mooning at the glass

  of windows. Those eyes – I look

  at not with them, but something of

  their melancholy I

  begin to lay claim to as my own.

  A boy in school:

  his lessons are

  my lessons, his

  punishments I learn to deserve.

  I stand up in him,

  tall as I am

  now, but without per-

  spective. Distant objects

  are too distant, yet will arrive

  soon. How his words

  muddle me; how my deeds

  betray him. That is not

  our intention; but where I should

  be one with him, I am one now

  with another. Before I had time

  to complete myself, I let her share

  in the building. This that I am

  now – too many

  labourers. What is mine is

  not mine only: her love, her

  child wait for my slow

  signature. Son, from the mirror

  you hold to me I turn

  to recriminate. That likeness

  you are at work upon – it hurts.

  A Grave Unvisited

  There are places where I have not been;

  Deliberately not, like Søren’s grave

  In Copenhagen. Seeing the streets

  With their tedious reproduction

  Of all streets, I preferred Dragort,

  The cobbled village with its flowers

  And pantiles by the clear edge

  Of the Baltic, that extinct sea.

  What they could do to anchor him

&nb
sp; With the heaviness of a nation’s

  Respectability they have done,

  I am sure. I imagine the size

  Of his tombstone, the solid marble

  Cracking his bones; but would he have been

  There to receive this toiling body’s

  Pilgrimage a few months back,

  Had I made it?

  What is it drives a people

  To the rejection of a great

  Spirit, and after to think it returns

  Reconciled to the shroud

  Prepared for it? It is Luke’s gospel

  Warns us of the danger

  Of scavenging among the dead

  For the living – so I go

  Up and down with him in his books,

  Hand and hand like a child

  With its father, pausing to stare

  As he did once at the mind’s country.

  No

  And one said, This man can sing;

  Let’s listen to him. But the other,

  Dirt on his mind, said, No, let’s

  Queer him. And the first, being weak,

  Consented. So the Thing came

  Nearer him, and its breath caused

  Him to retch, and none knew why.

  But he rested for one long month,

  And after began to sing

  For gladness, and the Thing stood,

  Letting him, for a year, for two;

  Then put out its raw hand

  And touched him, and the wound took

  Over, and the nurses wiped off

  The poetry from his cracked lips.

  The Observer

  Catrin lives in a nice place

  Of bracken, a looking-glass

  For the sea that not far off

  Glitters. ‘You live in a nice place,

  Catrin.’ The eyes regard me

  Unmoved; the wind fidgets

  With her hair. Her tongue is a wren

  Fluttering in the mouth’s cage.

  Here is one whom life made,

  Omitting an ingredient,

  For fun; for luck? How should I know

  Its motives, who was not born

  To question them, only to see

  What I see: the golden landscape

  Of nature, with the twisted creatures

  Crossing it, each with his load.

  Concession

  Not that he brought flowers

  Except for the eyes’ blue,

  Perishable ones, or that his hands,

  Famed for kindness were put then

  To such usage; but rather that, going

  Through flowers later, she yet could feel

  These he spared perhaps for my sake.

  Sir Gelli Meurig

  (Elizabethan)

  I imagine it, a land

  Rain-soaked, far away

  In the west, in time;

  The sea folded too rough

  On the shingle, with hard

  Breakers and steep

  To climb; but game-ridden

  And lining his small table

  Too thickly – Gelli Meurig,

  Squire of a few

  Acres, but swollen-headed

  With dreaming of a return

  To incense, to the confections

  Of worship; a Welsh fly

  Caught in a web spun

  For a hornet.

  Don’t blame him.

  Others have turned their backs,

  As he did, and do so still,

  On our land. Leaves light

  The autumn, but not for them.

  Emptily the sea’s cradle

  Rocks. They want the town

  And its baubles; the fine clothes

  They dress one in, who manage

  The strings. Helplessly they dance

  To a mad tune, who at home

  In the bracken could have remained

  Humble but free.

  Christmas

  There is a morning;

  Time brings it nearer,

  Brittle with frost

  And starlight. The owls sing

  In the parishes. The people rise

  And walk to the churches’

  Stone lanterns, there to kneel

  And eat the new bread

  Of love, washing it down

  With the sharp taste

  Of blood they will shed.

  The Green Isle

  It is the sort of country that,

  After leaving, one is ashamed of

  Being rude about. That gentleness

  Of green nature, reflected

  In its people – what has one done

  To deserve it? They sit about

  Over slow glasses, discussing,

  Not the weather, the news,

  Their families, but the half

  Legendary heroes of old days:

  Women who gave their name

  To a hill, who wore the stars

  For bracelet; clanking warriors,

  Shearing the waves with their swords.

  That man shuffling dustily,

  His pants through, to the door

  Of the gin shop, is not as mean

  As he looks; he has the tongue

  For which ale is but the excuse

  To trespass in golden meadows

  Of talk, poaching his words

  From the rich, but feasting on them

  In that stale parlour with the zest

  And freedom of a great poet.

  The Fisherman

  A simple man,

  He liked the crease on the water

  His cast made, but had no pity

  For the broken backbone

  Of water or fish.

  One of his pleasures, thirsty,

  Was to ask a drink

  At the hot farms;

  Leaving with a casual thank you,

  As though they owed it him.

  I could have told of the living water

  That springs pure.

  He would have smiled then,

  Dancing his speckled fly in the shallows,

  Not understanding.

  Traeth Maelgwn

  Blue sea; clouds coming up

  For convention only; the marks

  On the sand, that mean nothing

  And don’t have to to the fat,

  Monoglot stranger. Maelgwn

  Was here once, juggling

  With the sea; there were rulers

  In Wales then, men jealous

  Of her honour. He put down

  Rivals, made himself king

  Of the waves, too; his throne

  Buoyant – that rocking beacon

  Its image. He kept his power

  By intelligence; we lose

  Ours for lack of it,

  Holding our caps out

  Beside a framed view

  We never painted, counting

  The few casual cowries

  With which we are fobbed off.

  Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant

  This is where he sought God.

  And found him? The centuries

  Have been content to follow

  Down passages of serene prose.

  There is no portrait of him

  But in the gallery of

  The imagination: a brow

  With the hair’s feathers

  Spilled on it? a cheek

  Too hollow? rows of teeth

  Broken on the unmanageable bone

  Of language? In this small room

  By the river expiating the sin

  Of his namesake?

  The smooth words

  Over which his mind flowed

  Have become an heirloom. Beauty

  Is how you say it, and the truth,

  Like this mountain-born torrent,

  Is content to hurry

  Not too furiously by.

  Sailors’ Hospital

  It was warm

  Inside, but there was

  Pain there. I came out

&n
bsp; Into the cold wind

  Of April. There were birds

  In the brambles’ old,

  Jagged iron, with one striking

  Its small song. To the west,

  Rising from the grey

  Water, leaning one

  On another were the town’s

  Houses. Who first began

  That refuse: time’s waste

  Growing at the edge

  Of the clean sea? Some sailor,

  Fetching up on the

  Shingle before wind

  Or current, made it his

  Harbour, hung up his clothes

  In the sunlight; found women

  To breed from – those sick men

  His descendants. Every day

  Regularly the tide

  Visits them with its salt

  Comfort; their wounds are shrill

  In the rigging of the

  Tall ships.

  With clenched thoughts,

  That not even the sky’s

  Daffodil could persuade

  To open, I turned back

  To the nurses in their tugging

  At him, as he drifted

  Away on the current

  Of his breath, further and further,

  Out of hail of our love.

  Reservoirs

  There are places in Wales I don’t go:

  Reservoirs that are the subconscious

  Of a people, troubled far down

  With gravestones, chapels, villages even;

  The serenity of their expression

  Revolts me, it is a pose

  For strangers, a watercolour’s appeal

  To the mass, instead of the poem’s

  Harsher conditions. There are the hills,

  Too; gardens gone under the scum

  Of the forests; and the smashed faces

  Of the farms with the stone trickle

  Of their tears down the hills’ side.

  Where can I go, then, from the smell

  Of decay, from the putrefying of a dead

  Nation? I have walked the shore

  For an hour and seen the English

  Scavenging among the remains

  Of our culture, covering the sand

  Like the tide and, with the roughness

  Of the tide, elbowing our language

  Into the grave that we have dug for it.

  Touching

  She kept touching me,

  As a woman will

  Accidentally, so the response,

  When given, is

  A presumption.

  I retained my