The Survivors by R. S. Thomas

I never told you this.
He told me about it often:
Seven days in an open boat – burned out,
No time to get food:
Biscuits and water and the unwanted sun,
With only the oars’ wing-beats for motion,
Labouring heavily towards land
That existed on a remembered chart,
Never on the horizon
Seven miles from the boat’s bow.

After two days song dried on their lips;
After four days speech.
On the fifth cracks began to appear
In the faces’ masks; salt scorched them,/
They began to think about death,
Each man to himself, feeding it
On what the rest could not conceal.
The sea was as empty as the sky,
A vast disc under a dome
Of the same vastness, perilously blue.

But on the sixth day towards evening
A bird passed. No one slept that night;
The boat had become an ear
Straining for the desired thunder
Of the wrecked waves. It was dawn when it came,
Ominous as the big guns
Of enemy shores. The men cheered it.
From the swell’s rise one of them saw the ruins
Of all that sea, where a lean horseman
Rode towards them and with a rope
Galloped them up on to the curt sand.

by R. S. Thomas
from The Bread of Truth (1963)

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On The Farm by R. S. Thomas

There was Dai Puw. He was no good.
They put him in the fields to dock swedes,
And took the knife from him, when he came home
At late evening with a grin
Like the slash of a knife on his face.
 
There was Llew Puw, and he was no good.
Every evening after the ploughing
With the big tractor he would sit in his chair,
And stare into the tangled fire garden,
Opening his slow lips like a snail.
 
There was Huw Puw, too. What shall I say?
I have heard him whistling in the hedges
On and on, as though winter
Would never again leave those fields,
And all the trees were deformed.
 
And lastly there was the girl:
Beauty under some spell of the beast.
Her pale face was the lantern
By which they read in life's dark book
The shrill sentence: God is love.
 
 
by R. S. Thomas
from The Bread of Truth (1963) 

‘Услышишь гром и вспомнишь обо мне’ a.k.a. ‘You will hear thunder and remember me’ by Anna Akhmatova

You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
 
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
When, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
 

by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)
(1961 - 1963)
from Седьмая книга (The Seventh Book)
translation by D. M. Thomas

Below is the original Russian version in cyrillic.

Услышишь гром и вспомнишь обо мне,
Подумаешь: она грозы желала...
Полоска неба будет твердо-алой,
А сердце будет как тогда - в огне.
Случится это в тот московский день,
Когда я город навсегда покину
И устремлюсь к желанному притину, 
Свою меж вас еще оставив тень. 

Souillac: Le Sacrifice d’Abraham by R. S. Thomas

And he grasps him by the hair

With innocent savagery.

And the son’s face is calm;

There is trust there.

 

And the beast looks on.

 

This is what art could do,

Interpreting faith

With serene chisel.

The resistant stone

Is quiet as our breath,

And is accepted.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from The Bread of Truth (1963)

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Fun fact: Souillac is a small market town, and is the hub for the area. This is an agricultural region which is known for its walnuts, strawberries and quiet, rural way of life. Thomas visited the abbey church of Sainte-Marie in this town and that is the subject of this poem. The domed roofs are similar to but rather smaller than those of Périgueux Cathedral. Fragments of the original Romanesque sculptures are grouped just inside the west door.

Funeral by R. S. Thomas

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.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from The Bread of Truth (1963)