Archive for R. S. Thomas

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A Song for St David’s Day

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on March 1, 2013 by telescoper

It’s St David’s Day today, so

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

I’m about to head off to three hours of mandatory Health and Safety Training so I’ll do a quick but appropriate post. I have posted this before, but I think it’s beautiful so make no apology for posting it again. It’s called Children’s Song and it’s by the great Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas.

We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.

by R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)

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St David’s Day Poem

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on March 1, 2012 by telescoper

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

As has become traditional on this blog, I’ve decided to mark St David’s Day (Dydd Gŵyl Dewi) by posting a poem by R.S. Thomas. This one is called To a Young Poet, but  if you change “poet” to “physicist” it’s not far off the mark either. Perhaps there is more than one young physicist that this speaks to!

For the first twenty years you are still growing
Bodily that is: as a poet, of course,
You are not born yet. It’s the next ten
You cut your teeth on to emerge smirking
For your brash courtship of the muse.
You will take seriously those first affairs
With young poems, but no attachments
Formed then but come to shame you,
When love has changed to a grave service
Of a cold queen.

From forty on
You learn from the sharp cuts and jags
Of poems that have come to pieces
In your crude hands how to assemble
With more skill the arbitrary parts
Of ode or sonnet, while time fosters
A new impulse to conceal your wounds
From her and from a bold public,
Given to pry.

You are old now
As years reckon, but in that slower
World of the poet you are just coming
To sad manhood, knowing the smile
On her proud face is not for you.

 

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Sea Christmas

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on December 21, 2011 by telescoper

This is the wrong Christmas
in the right place: mistletoe
water there is no kissing
under; the soused holly

of the wrack, and birds coming
to the bird-table with
no red on their breast. All
night it has snowed

foam on the splintering
beaches, but the dawn-
wind carries it away, load
after load, and look,

the sand at the year’s
solstice is young flesh
on a green crib, product
of an immaculate conception.

by R.S. Thomas (1913-2000).

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Welsh Testament

Posted in Poetry with tags , on October 11, 2011 by telescoper

The video recalls the snows of last winter but the poem, read by the poet R.S. Thomas, is deeper still…

All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?
I spoke a tongue that was passed on
To me in the place I happened to be,
A place huddled between grey walls
Of cloud for at least half the year.
My word for heaven was not yours.
The word for hell had a sharp edge
Put on it by the hand of the wind
Honing, honing with a shrill sound
Day and night. Nothing that Glyn Dwr
Knew was armour against the rain’s
Missiles. What was descent from him?

Even God had a Welsh name:
We spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.

Yet men sought us despite this.
My high cheek-bones, my length of skull
Drew them as to a rare portrait
By a dead master. I saw them stare
From their long cars, as I passed knee-deep
In ewes and wethers. I saw them stand
By the thorn hedges, watching me string
The far flocks on a shrill whistle.
And always there was their eyes’ strong
Pressure on me: You are Welsh, they said;
Speak to us so; keep your fields free
Of the smell of petrol, the loud roar
Of hot tractors; we must have peace
And quietness.

Is a museum
Peace? I asked. Am I the keeper
Of the heart’s relics, blowing the dust
In my own eyes? I am a man;
I never wanted the drab role
Life assigned me, an actor playing
To the past’s audience upon a stage
Of earth and stone; the absurd label
Of birth, of race hanging askew
About my shoulders. I was in prison
Until you came; your voice was a key
Turning in the enormous lock
Of hopelessness. Did the door open
To let me out or yourselves in?

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Judgment Day

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on May 22, 2011 by telescoper

Well, I guess the Rapture didn’t come after all. Or maybe it did and I’m unsurprisingly not among the chosen few to be saved? I studiously avoided try to make fun of the whole thing, despite the fact that yesterday everyone seemed to be posting rapture jokes like there was no tomorrow.

Anyway, for those who were disappointed by the poor turnout for the Apocalypse here is another poem by R.S. Thomas; this one is called called Judgment Day…

Yes, that’s how I was,
I know that face,
That bony figure
Without grace
Of flesh or limb;
In health happy,
Careless of the claim
Of the world’s sick
Or the world’s poor;
In pain craven –
Lord breathe once more
On that sad mirror
Let me be lost
In mist for ever
Rather than own
Such bleak reflections,
Let me go back
On my two knees
Slowly to undo
The knot of life
That was tied there.

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R.S. Thomas, a Short Biography

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on April 25, 2011 by telescoper

I came across this short documentary about the poet R.S. Thomas on Youtube and thought I’d share it.

The documentary was made in anticipation of Thomas winning the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, for which he had been nominated. Sadly he didn’t win it, and the honour went to Seamus Heaney.

The film is only a few minutes long, but it says a lot about the man and his life as well as featuring two of his greatest poems. One, Children’s Song, I’ve posted before; the other is The Other, which is reproduced here:

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village, that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.

Apparently, at St Hywyn’s Church in Aberdaron, where Thomas was vicar for many years, you can see a large slate with this poem carved upon it; it is shown at the end of the short film. I don’t know why, but I have developed a curious longing to visit that place …

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I was vicar of large things

Posted in Poetry with tags , on April 22, 2011 by telescoper

It seems appropriate to post something today – Good Friday – from the great Welsh poet R.S. Thomas. An Anglican clergyman, Thomas was vicar at St Hywyn’s Church (which was built 1137) in Aberdaron at the western tip of the Llŷn Peninsula. In this, one of his most famous poems, he speaks eloquently and movingly of the frustrations of his calling. I also managed to find a recording of the poet himself reading it.

and here is the text

I was vicar of large things
in a small parish. Small-minded
I will not say, there were depths
in some of them I shrank back
from, wells that the word “God”
fell into and died away,
and for all I know is still
falling. Who goes for water
to such must prepare for a long
wait. Their eyes looked at me
and were the remains of flowers
on an old grave. I was there,
I felt, to blow on ashes
that were too long cold. Often,
when I thought they were about
to unbar to me, the draught
out of their empty places
came whistling so that I wrapped
myself in the heavier clothing
of my calling, speaking of light and love
in the thickening shadows of their kitchens

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Another Poem for Another St David’s Day

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on March 1, 2011 by telescoper

It’s St David’s Day again. Tonight I’m off to the St David’s Day concert at St David’s Hall, which is being broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and which should have a cracking atmosphere because it’s sold out. Since we’ve got front-row seats you might even hear me coughing! I’ll try to post a review in due course, either this evening or tomorrow morning.

In case you’re wondering, I’m up early this morning in order to get a full day’s work in before the concert which starts at 7pm and which will need me to leave work earlier than usual.

Last year I marked the occasion of St David’s Day with a poem by Dylan Thomas and I’ve noticed that quite a few people have been reading that post in the last few days. It seems appropriate therefore to post another poem this year. It’s only since coming to Wales – which I did less than four years ago – that I’ve discovered the poetry of R.S. Thomas and in that short time I’ve developed a respect bordering on reverence for his work. It seems entirely fitting that I put up an example of his poems on St David’s Day. I hope you enjoy it!

There Is A Being, They Say by R. S. Thomas (1913-2000)

There is a being, they say,
neither body nor spirit,
that is more power than reason, more reason
than love, whose origins
are unknown, who is apart
and with us, the silence
to which we appeal, the architect
of our failure. It takes the genes
and experiments with them and our children
are born blind, or seeing have
smooth hands that are the instruments
of destruction. It is the spoor
in the world’s dark leading away
from the discovered victim, the expression
the sky shows us after
an excess of spleen. It has gifts it
distributes to those least fitted
to use them. It is everywhere and
nowhere, and looks sideways into the shocked face
of life, challenging it to disown it.

And here is the poet himself reading it


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Children’s Song

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on February 9, 2011 by telescoper

We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.

by R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)


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At It

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 18, 2010 by telescoper

Apologies for my posts being a bit thin on original content recently. There’s a lot going on at the moment and it has not been easy to find the time to write at any length. Before too long I hope to be able to get back into the swing of things and maybe even blog about science. Or even do some! In the meantime, however, I couldn’t resist passing on this poem called, At It, by R.S. Thomas. I’ve posted some of his verse on previous occasions, but I only found this one a few days ago and couldn’t resist sharing it, not least because it mentions Sir Arthur Eddington (probably in a reference to one of his popular science books).

I think he sits at that strange table
of Eddington’s. That is not a table
at all, but nodes and molecules
pushing against molecules
and nodes; and he writes there
in invisible handwriting the instructions
the genes follow. I imagine his
face that is more the face
of a clock, and the time told by it
is now, though Greece is referred
to and Egypt and empires
not yet begun.
+++++++++ And I would have
things to say to this God
at the judgement, storming at him,
as Job stormed with the eloquence
of the abused heart. But there will
be no judgement other than the verdict
of his calculations, that abstruse
geometry that proceeds eternally
in the silence beyond right and wrong.


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