by R. S. Thomas
Pavane
Convergences
Of the spirit! What
Century, love? I,
Too; you remember –
Brescia? This sunlight reminds
Of the brocade. I dined
Long. And now the music
Of darkness in your eyes
Sounds. But Brescia,
And the spreading foliage
Of smoke! With Yeats’ birds
Grown hoarse.
Artificer
Of the years, is this
Your answer? The long dream
Unwound; we followed
Through time to the tryst
With ourselves. But wheels roll
Between and the shadow
Of the plane falls. The
Victim remains
Nameless on the tall
Steps. Master, I
Do not wish, I do not wish
To continue.
Via Negativa
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.
Making
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.
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
Us is time and the victims
Of time, travellers
To a new Bethlehem, statesmen
And scientists with their hands full
Of the gifts that destroy.
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 altars, and I will choose the best
Of them to be thrown back into the sea.
And that was only on one island.
He
And the dogfish, spotted like God’s face,
Looks at him, and the seal’s eye-
Ball is cold. Autumn arrives
With birds rattling in brown showers
From hard skies. He holds out his two
Hands, calloused with the long failure
Of prayer: Take my life, he says
To the bleak sea, but the sea rejects him
Like wrack. He dungs the earth with
His children and the earth yields him
Its stone. Nothing he does, nothing he
Says is accepted, and the thin dribble
Of his poetry dries on the rocks
Of a harsh landscape under an ailing sun.
Postscript
As life improved, their poems
Grew sadder and sadder. Was there oil
For the machine? It was
The vinegar in the poets’ cup.
The tins marched to the music
Of the conveyor belt. A billion
Mouths opened. Production,
Production, the wheels
Whistled. Among the forests
Of metal the one human
Sound was the lament of
The poets for deciduous language.
The River
And the cobbled water
Of the stream with the trout’s indelible
Shadows that winter
Has not erased – I walk it
Again under a clean
Sky with the fish, speckled like thrushes,
Silently singing among the weed’s
Branches.
I bring the heart
Not the mind to the interpretation
Of their music, letting the stream
Comb me, feeling it fresh
In my veins, revisiting the sources
That are as near now
As on the morning I set out from them.
Female
It was the other way round:
God waved his slow wand
And the creature became a woman,
Imperceptibly, retaining its body,
Nose, brow, lips, eyes,
And the face that was like a flower
On the neck’s stem. The man turned to her,
Crazy with the crushed smell
Of her hair; and her eyes warned him
To keep off. And she spoke to him with the voice
Of his own conscience, and rippled there
In the shade. So he put his hands
To his face, while her forked laughter
Played on him, and his leaves fell
Silently round him, and he hung there
On himself, waiting for the God to see.
Earth
What made us think
It was yours? Because it was signed
With your blood, God of battles?
It is such a small thing,
Easily overlooked in the multitude
Of the worlds. We are misled
By perspective; the microscope
Is our sin, we tower enormous
Above it the stronger it
Grows. Where have your incarnations
Gone to? The flesh is too heavy
To wear you, God of light
And fire. The machine replaces
The hand that fastened you
To the cross, but cannot absolve us.
All Right
I look. You look
Away. No colour,
No ruffling of the brow’s
Surface betrays
Your feeling. As though I
Were not here; as
Though you were your own
Mirror, you arrange yourself
For the play. My eyes’
Adjectives; the way that
I scan you; the
Conjunction the flesh
Needs – all these
Are as nothing
To you. Serene, cool,
Motionless, no statue
Could show less
The impression of
My regard. Madam, I
Grant the artistry
Of your part. Let us
Consider it, then,
A finished performance.
Soliloquy
And God thought:
Pray away,
Creatures; I’m going to destroy
It. The mistake’s mine,
If you like. I have blundered
Before; the glaciers erased
My error.
I saw them go
Further than you – palaces,
Missiles. My privacy
Was invaded; then the flaw
Took over; they allied themselves
With the dust. Winds blew away
Their pasture. Their bones signalled
From the desert to me
In vain.
After the dust, fire;
The earth burned. I have forgotten
How long, but the fierce writing
Seduced me. I blew with my cool
Breath; the vapour condensed
In the hollows. The sun was torn
From my side. Out of the waters
You came, as subtle
As water, with your mineral
Poetry and promises
Of obedience. I listened to you
Too long. Within the churches
You built me you genuflected
To the machine. Where will it
Take you from the invisible
Viruses, the personnel
Of the darkness that do my will?
Nocturne by Ben Shahn
‘Why look at me like that?’
‘Well – it’s your hand on the guitar.’
‘Don’t touch it; there is fire in it.’
‘But why doesn’t it burn you?’
‘It does, it does; but inside me.’
‘I see no smoke at your nostrils.’
‘But I see green leaves at your lips.’
‘They are the thoughts I would conceal.’
‘You are the music that I compose.’
‘Play me, then, back to myself.’
‘It is too late; your face forbids it.’
‘The arteries of the tall trees –’
‘Are electric, charged with your blood.’
‘But my hand now sleeps in my lap.’
‘Let it remain so, clawed like my own.’
H’m
and one said
speak to us of love
and the preacher opened
his mouth and the word God
fell out so they tried
again speak to us
of God then but the preacher
was silent reaching
his arms out but the little
children the ones with
big bellies and bow
legs that were like
a razor shell
were too weak to come
The Kingdom
It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
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.
Other
It was perfect. He could do
Nothing about it. Its waters
Were as clear as his own eye. The grass
Was his breath. The mystery
Of the dark earth was what went on
In himself. He loved and
Hated it with a parent’s
Conceit, admiring his own
Work, resenting its
Independence. There were trysts
In the greenwood at which
He was not welcome. Youths and girls,
Fondling the pages of
A strange book, awakened
His envy. The mind achieved
What the heart could not. He began planning
The destruction of the long peace
Of the place. The machine appeared
In the distance, singing to itself
Of money. Its song was the web
They were caught in, men and women
Together. The villages were as flies
To be sucked empty.
God secreted
A tear. Enough, enough,
He commanded, but the machine
Looked at him and went on singing.
The Fair
The idiot goes round and around
With his brother in a bumping-car
At the fair. The famous idiot
Smile hangs over the car’s edge,
Illuminating nothing. This is mankind
Being taken for a ride by a rich
Relation. The responses are fixed:
Bump, smile; bump, smile. And the current
Is generated by the smooth flow
Of the shillings. This is an orchestra
Of steel with the constant percussion
Of laughter. But where he should be laughing
Too, his features are split open, and look!
Out of the cracks come warm, human tears.
Young and Old
Cold sea, cold sky:
This is how age looks
At a thing. The people natter,
The wind blows. Nothing they do
Is of worth. The great problems
Remain, stubborn, unsolved.
Man leaves his footprints
Momentarily on a vast shore.
And the tide comes,
That the children play with.
Ours are the first questions
They shelve. The wind is the blood
In their veins. Above them the aircraft
Domesticate the huge sky.
Boatman
A brute and
Unconscionable. He would beat,
If he had them, all
Wives, wallowing in their slopped
Kisses. Whips are too good
For such. But when I see
The waves bucking and how he sits
Them so, I think this man
A god, deserving the flowers
The sea women crown him with.
Harbour
a harbour with the
boats going in and out
at top speed their sirens
blowing and their funnels trailing
long smoke and the tousled
bluejackets of the waves emptying
their pockets to the wind’s
hornpipe and far down
in the murky basements the turning
of bright bodies smooth
as a bell mermaids you
say but I say
fish
Madam
And if you ask her
She has no name;
But her eyes say,
Water is cold.
She is three years old
And willing to kiss;
But her lips say,
Apples are sour.
Omens
The queen sat on the throne of E
ngland,
Fingering delicately the bright stones
Of its handrail. The heads rolled
In the English dust. The queen smiled.
Meanwhile in America a Red Indian
Fitted a coloured arrow to his bow
And took aim. The brush turkey fell
In a storm of feathers. The Indian went home
Silently to his skin tent
By the lake to expiate the sin
Of its killing. Over the steaming entrails
He saw the first white man come with his guns and jails.
Relations
An ordinary lot:
The sons dwindling from a rich
Father to a house in a terrace
And furniture of the cheap sort;
The daughters respectable, marrying
Approved husbands with clean shoes
And collars; as though dullness
And nonentity’s quietness
Were virtues after the crazed ways
Of that huge man, their father, buying himself
Smiles, sailing his paper money
From windows of the Welsh hotel
He had purchased to drown in drink.
But one of them was drowned
Honourably. A tale has come down
From rescuers, forced to lie off
By the breakers, of men lined up
At the rail as the ship foundered,
Smoking their pipes and bantering. And he
Was of their company; his tobacco
Stings my eyes, who am ordinary too.
Astronauts
They brought no edifying
Information back. It was the moon
Goddess they went to inspect,
Her gold hair, her gold thighs.
An absence of beauty
Oppressed them:
The flesh that was like
Pumice, a woman weary
Of hauling at
The slow tides.
Godhead, it
Seems, is best left
To itself; it is a fire
Extinguished, a luminary whose
Spent light reaches us still.
Islandmen
And they come sailing
From the island through the flocks
Of the sea with the boat full
Of their own flocks, brimming fleeces
And whelk eyes, with the bleating
