Returning from a raid,
just missed the tower
where, over the West Door
the Wild Man with oak leaves
wound round his body
faces the Dragon
wreathed in vines.
Crash landed at Church Farm,
ploughing itself in,
churning up the loam.
Two crew dead.
The Flight Engineer
periodically revisits
the old country, resuming
his portion of the pasture.
by Jeremy Hooker
from ‘Debris‘ a sequence of poems
Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed,
Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,
Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud.
Docking mangels, chipping the green skin
From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin
Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth
To a stiff sea of clouds that glint in the wind—-
So are his days spent, his spittled mirth
Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks
Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week.
And then at night see him fixed in his chair
Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire.
There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind.
His clothes, sour with years of sweat
And animal contact, shock the refined,
But affected, sense with their stark naturalness.
Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season
Against siege of rain and the wind’s attrition,
Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress
Not to be stormed even in death’s confusion.
Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars,
Enduring like a tree under the curious stars.
by R. S. Thomas
from The Stones of the Fields (1946)
Rambling At The Bridge Head 