Incubation by R. S. Thomas

In the absence of such wings
as were denied us we insist
on inheriting others from the machine.
The eggs that we incubate bring forth
in addition to saints monsters,
the featherless brood whose one thing
in common with dunnocks is
that they do not migrate. We are fascinated
by evil; almost you could say
it is the plumage we acquire
by natural selection. There is a contradiction
here. Generally subdued feathers
in birds are compensated for
by luxuriant song. Not so these
whose frayed notes go with their plain clothes.
It is we who, gaudy as jays,
make cacophonous music under an egg-shell sky.

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

Incarnations by R S Thomas

A child’s memories
are of the womb, the sleep
by unearthly waters;
his dreams are of a happiness
unfounded. This one fell,
was torn out of a vast side
by envy in transit.
His whickering disordered
the stars, then silence took over,
twelve dawdling years
on the way to the temple.

Take one from one
there remain three.
No, no, no.

Through child’s answer
a cross was drawn
by Judaic fingers.

The way forward
was the way back
to a carpenter’s patience.

A preacher’s temptation
is the voice persuading
he is his own message.
So the emphasis on the other
proved to them he blasphemed.
This stripling, this Nazarene
nobody the mirror
of God! They hurled their scorn’s
stones and the cracks accentuated
the sky’s age. There was scant time.
He withdrew into the wilderness
of the spirit. The true fast
was abstention from language.

He returned hungry
yet offered his body
as bread to believers.

The crumbs flew
lavishing their feathers
on twelve baskets.

They lost him then
in the garden of himself
gloomy with prayer

until Judas found him,
enviously guided by the sour
shining of his starved kiss.

What are a god’s dreams?
Can he dream without sleep?
What was the Incarnation
but the waking dream of one
calling himself Son of Man?

For the dreams come, always they come:
the babe’s dream by amniotic
waters; dream of the ovum
of the enchanted circle
when it was yet unpierced.

What are a child’s dreams?
Bubbles blown for adults
to seek their reflections in?
What are the leaves in autumn
but the mind flaking beneath

truth’s chisel? I have heard the professor,
laying his books down, huskily
describing the first rise
on a river in Scotland.
I have listened to the poet

with uncombed hair, delicate
of finger, adding nought
after nought to his imagined
balance. I have said to the future:
‘Show me the dreamless man,

the prose man, the man imprisoned
by his horizons.’ And the machine
stalled at an abyss, empty
as the tomb in Palestine,
the eternal afterdraught of the bone’s dream.

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

The Hand by R S Thomas

It was a hand. God looked at it
and looked away. There was a coldness
about his heart, as though the hand
clasped it. As at the end
of a dark tunnel, he saw cities
the hand would build, engines
that it would raze them with. His sight
dimmed. Tempted to undo the joints
of the fingers, he picked it up.
But the hand wrestled with him. ‘Tell
me your name,’ it cried, ‘and I will write it
in bright gold. Are there not deeds
to be done, children to make, poems
to be written? The world
is without meaning, awaiting
my coming.’ But God, feeling the nails
in his side, the unnerving warmth
of the contact, fought on in
silence. This was the long war with himself
always foreseen, the question not
to be answered. What is the hand
for? The immaculate conception
preceding the delivery
of the first tool? ‘I let you go,’
he said, ‘but without blessing.
Messenger to the mixed things
of your making, tell them I am.’

by R. S. Thomas
from Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)

Harvest End by R. S. Thomas

(From the Welsh of Caledfryn)

The seasons fly;
the flowers wither;
the leaves lie
on the ground. Listen
to the sad song
of the reapers: ‘Ripe
corn’, as over the sea
the birds go.

Suddenly the year
ends. The wind rages;
everything in its path
breaks. Dire weather;
in front of a stick
fire, fetched from
the forest, firm and infirm
cower within doors.

The longest of lives
too soon slips by.
Careers fold and with
them good looks fade.
Spring’s bloom is spent,
summer is done, too.
With a rush we come
to winter in the grave.

by R. S. Thomas
from Experimenting with an Amen (1986)

Additional information: Caledfryn refers to William Williams (pen name “Caledfryn” or “Gwilym Caledfryn“) (6 February 1801 – 23 March 1869) who was a Welsh Congregational minister, poet and literary critic born at Bryn y Ffynnon, Denbigh. He was one of the leading figures in the Welsh Eisteddfod movement and did much to raise the standards of Welsh literature of his time.

Tidal by R. S. Thomas

The waves run up the shore
and fall back. I run
up the approaches of God
and fall back. The breakers return
reaching a little further,
gnawing away at the main land.
They have done this thousands
of years, exposing little by little
the rock under the soil’s face.
I must imitate them only
in my return to the assault,
not in their violence. Dashing
my prayers at him will achieve
little other than the exposure
of the rock under his surface.
My returns must be made
on my knees. Let despair be known
as my ebb-tide; but let prayer
have its springs, too, brimming,
disarming him; discovering somewhere
among his fissures deposits of mercy
where trust may take root and grow.

by R. S. Thomas
from Mass for Hard Times (1992)