Tag: today

‘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)

Message by R.S. Thomas

 A message from God
 delivered by a bird
 at my window, offering friendship.
 Listen, such language!
 Who said God was without
 speech? Every word an injection
 to make me smile. Meet me,
 it says, to-morrow here
 at the same time and you will remember
 how wonderful to-day
 was: no pain, no worry;
 irrelevant the mystery, if
 unsolved. I gave you the X-ray
 eye for you to use not
 to prospect, but to discover
 the un-malignancy of love's
 growth. You were a patient, too,
 anaesthetised on truth's table
 with life operating on you
 with a green scalpel. Meet me, I say,
 to-morrow and I will sing it for you
 all over again, when you have come to.
 
 
By R.S. Thomas
 
 
 from Experimenting with an Amen (1986)

Today by Gillian Clarke

Kate in full day in the heat of the sun

looks into the grave, sees in that unearthing

of a Roman settlement, under a stone

only the shadow of a skeleton.

 

Gwyn on his back in the dark, lying

on the lawn dry from months of drought,

finds in the sky through the telescope

the fuzzy dust of stars he had been searching.

 

Imprint of bones is a constellation

shining against silence, against darkness,

and stars are the pearly vertebrae

of water-drops against the drought, pelvis,

 

skull, scapula five million light years old

wink in the glass, and stardust is all we hold

of the Roman lady’s negative

in the infinite dark of the grave.

 

by Gillian Clarke

from New Poems

‘There Is Deep Meaning In A Parting’ by Fyodor Tyutchev

There is deep meaning in a parting:

fleeting love, eternal love –

love’s but a dream, a dream’s but a moment…

Today, tomorrow – awakening is imminent.

And you wake up, at last.

 

by Фёдор Иванович Тютчев (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev)

(1851)

translated by Irina Mashinski

Fun Fact: Counted amongst the admirers of Tyutchev‘s works were Dostoevsky and Tolstoy along with Nekrasov and Fet then later Osip Mandelstam who, in a passage approved by Shalamov, believed that a Russian poet should not have copy of Tyutchev in his personal library – he should know all of Tyutchev off by heart.