Robin by R. S. Thomas

Dawn. The robin

crumbles his song

into a few pieces

for our Communion.

And humbly we accept;

we need the sacrament

of the Real Presence

if we are to continue

to believe. Pure

spirit is a refraction

only. It is the rainbow

in life’s spray that,

when we put our starved hand

into, lets our hand through.

.

But this wafer of song

we touch with the tip

of our belief, is it not

the pearl without price

we were told of and

have come upon that

we must give up all

our payments on a hire-purchase

happiness to make our own?

.

.

By R. S. Thomas

from Unpublished Poems

The Casualty by R.S. Thomas

 I had forgotten
 the old quest for truth
 I was here for Other cares
 
 held me: urgencies
 of the body; a girl
 beckoned; money
 
 had never appeared
 so ethereal; it was God's blood
 circulating in the veins
 
 of creation; I partook
 of it like Communion, lost
 myself on my way
 
 home, with the varying voices
 on call. Moving backward
 into a receding
 
 future, I lost the use
 of perspective, borrowing poetry
 to buy my children
 
 their purpose. The past was a poor
 king, rendering his crown down
 for the historian. Every day
 
 I went on with that
 metallic warfare in which
 the one casualty is love.
 
 
  by R. S. Thomas
 from Laboratories of the Spirit (1975) 

Gift by R. S. Thomas

Some ask the world

and are diminished

in the receiving

of it. You gave me

 

only this small pool

that the more I drink

from, the more overflows

me with sourceless light.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from Experimenting with an Amen (1986)