Archive for Absence

Via Negativa, by R.S. Thomas

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , , , on February 23, 2026 by telescoper 
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.

by R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)

Although he was an Anglican minister, the poems of R.S. Thomas – most famously The Absence – often speak of God as absent rather than present, and the religious experience as being one of negation rather than affirmation. These views seem strange and rather comfortless coming from a priest, but as an atheist what do I know? None of that detracts from the austere beauty of his verse.

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Absence – Edwin Morgan

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on January 22, 2025 by telescoper 
My shadow --
I woke to a wind swirling the curtains light and dark
and the birds twittering on the roofs, I lay cold
in the early light in my room high over London.
What fear was it that made the wind sound like a fire
so that I got up and looked out half-asleep
at the calm rows of street-lights fading far below?
Without fire
Only the wind blew.
But in the dream I woke from, you
came running through the traffic, tugging me, clinging
to my elbow, your eyes spoke
what I could not grasp --
Nothing, if you were here!

The wind of the early quiet
merges slowly now with a thousand rolling wheels.
The lights are out, the air is loud.
It is an ordinary January day.
My shadow, do you hear the streets?
Are you at my heels? Are you here?
And I throw back the sheets.

by Edwin Morgan (1920-2010)

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