‘God’s fool, God’s jester’ by R. S. Thomas

God’s fool, God’s jester

capering at his right hand

in torment, proving the fallacy

of the impassible, reminding

him of omnipotence’s limits.

.

I have seen the figure

on our human tree, burned

into it by thought’s lightning

and it writhed as I looked.

.

A god had no alternative

but himself. With what crown

plurality but with thorns?

Whose is the mirthless laughter

at the beloved irony

at his side? The universe over,

omniscience warns, the crosses

are being erected from such

material as is available

to remorse. What are the stars

but time’s fires going out

before ever the crucified

can be taken down?

Today

there is only this one option

before me. Remembering,

as one goes out into space,

on the way to the sun,

how dark it will grow,

I stare up into the darkness

of his countenance, knowing it

a reflection of the three days and nights

at the back of love’s looking-

glass even a god must spend.

.

.

by R. S. Thomas

from Counterpoint; 3. Crucifixion (1990)

The Water-Diviner by Gillian Clarke

 His fingers tell water like prayer.
 He hears its voice in the silence
 through fifty feet of rock
 on an afternoon dumb with drought.
 
 Under an old tin bath, a stone,
 an upturned can, his copper pipe
 glints with discovery. We dip our hose
 deep into the dark, sucking its dryness,
 
 till suddenly the water answers,
 not the little sound we know,
 but a thorough bass too deep
 for the naked ear, shouts through the hose
 
 a word we could not say, or spell, or remember,
 something like “dŵr... dŵr.”
 
 
 by Gillian Clarke
 from Letter from a Far Country (1982) 

Dŵr means 'water' in the Welsh language.