Sailors’ Hospital by R. S. Thomas

It was warm

Inside, but there was

Pain there, I came out

Into the cold wind

Of April. There were birds

In the brambles’ old,

Jagged iron, with one striking

Its small song. To the west,

Rising from the grey

Water, leaning one

On another were the town’s

Houses. Who first began

That refuse: time’s waste

Growing at the edge

Of the clean sea? Some sailor,

Fetching up on the

Shingle before wind

Or current, made it his

Harbour, hung up his clothes

In the sunlight; found women

To breed from – those sick men

His descendants. Every day

Regularly the tide

Visits them with its salt

Comfort; their wounds are shrill

In the rigging of the

Tall ships.

With clenched thoughts,

That not even the sky’s

Daffodil could persuade

To open, I turned back

To the nurses in their tugging

At him, as he drifted

Away on the current

Of his breath, further and further,

Out of hail of our love.

.

by R. S. Thomas

from Not That He Brought Flowers (1968)

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The Return by R. S. Thomas

Coming home was to that:

The white house in the cool grass

Membraned with shadow, the bright stretch

Of stream that was its looking-glass;

 

And smoke growing above the roof

To a tall tree among whose boughs

The first stars renewed their theme

Of time and death and a man’s vows.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from Song At The Year’s Turning (1955)

Bread by R. S. Thomas

Hunger was lonliness, betrayed

By the pitiless candour of the stars’

Talk, in an old byre he prayed

Not for food; to pray was to know

Waking from a dark dream to find

The white loaf on the white snow;

Not for warmth, warmth brought the rain’s

Blurring of the essential point

Of ice probing his raw pain.

He prayed for love, love that would share

His rags’ secret; rising he broke

Like sun crumbling the gold air

The live bread for the starved folk.

by R. S. Thomas

from Poetry For Supper (1958)