At the End by R. S. Thomas

Few possessions: a chair,
a table, a bed,
to say my prayers by,
and, gathered from the shore,
the bone-like, crossed sticks
proving that nature
acknowledges the Crucifixion.
All night I am at
a window not too small
to be frame to the stars
that are no further off
than the city lights
I have rejected. By day
the passers-by who are not
pilgrims, stare through the rain’s
bars, seeing me as prisoner
of the one view, I who
have been made free
by the tide’s pendulum truth
that the heart that is low now
will be at the full tomorrow.

by R. S. Thomas
from No Truce With The Furies (1995)

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Winged God by R. S. Thomas

All men. Or shall we say,
not chauvinistic, all
people, it is all
people? Beasts manure
the ground, nibble to
promote growth; but man,
the consumer, swallows
like the god of mythology
his own kind. Beasts walk
among birds and never
do the birds scare; but the human,
that alienating shadow
with the Bible under the one
arm and under the other
the bomb, as often
drawn as he is repelled
by the stranger waiting for him
in the mirror – how
can he return home
when his gaze forages
beyond the stars? Pity him,
then, this winged god, rupturer
of gravity's control
accelerating on and
outward in the afterglow
of a receding laughter?
 
by R. S. Thomas
from No Truce With The Furies (1995) 

Blind Noel by R. S. Thomas

Christmas; the themes are exhausted.

Yet there is always room

on the heart for another

snowflake to reveal a pattern.


Love knocks with such frosted fingers.

I look out. In the shadow

of so vast a God I shiver, unable

to detect the child for the whiteness.


by R. S. Thomas

from No Truce with the Furies (1995)

Island by R. S. Thomas

I would still go there
if only to await
the once-in-a-lifetime
opening of truth's flower;

if only to escape
such bought freedom, and live,
prisoner of the keyless sea,
on the mind's bread and water.

by R. S. Thomas
from No Truce with the Furies (1995)

Evening by R. S. Thomas

The archer with time

as his arrow – has he broken

his strings that the rainbow

is so quiet over our village?

 

Let us stand, then in the interval

of our wounding, till the silence

turn golden and love is

a moment eternally overflowing.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from No Truce With the Furies (1995)