Thirteen Blackbirds Looking at a Man (R S Thomas Poems)
IIt is calm.It is as thoughwe lived in a gardenthat had not yet arrivedat the knowledge ofgood and evil.But there ...
R. S. Thomas Poems (81 Poems)
A Welsh Testament (R S Thomas Poems)
All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?I spoke a tongue that was passed onTo me in the place I ...
Welsh Landscape (R S Thomas Poems)
To live in Wales is to be consciousAt dusk of the spilled bloodThat went into the making of the wild ...
Welsh History (R S Thomas Poems)
We were a people taut for war; the hillsWere no harder, the thin grassClothed them more warmly than the coarseShirts ...
The Face (R S Thomas Poems)
When I close my eyes, I can see it,That bare hill with the man ploughing,Corrugating that brown roofUnder a hard ...
A Peasant (R S Thomas Poems)
Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed,Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,Who pens a few sheep ...
Sarn Rhiw (R S Thomas Poems)
So we know she must have said something to him--What language, life? Oh, what language? Thousands of years later I inhabit a house whose stone is ...
Taliesin 1952 (R S Thomas Poems)
I have been all men known to history,Wondering at the world and at time passing;I have seen evil, and the ...
Taliesin (R S Thomas Poems)
I have been all men known to history,Wondering at the world and at time passing;I have seen evil, and the ...
To a Young Poet (R S Thomas Poems)
For the first twenty years you are still growingBodily that is: as a poet, of course,You are not born yet. ...
Reservoirs (R S Thomas Poems)
There are places in Wales I don't go:Reservoirs that are the subconciousOf a people, troubled far downWith gravestones, chapels, villages ...
Arrival (R S Thomas Poems)
Not conscious that you have been seeking suddenly you come upon itthe village in the Welsh hills dust free with no road outbut the one ...
On The Farm (R S Thomas Poems)
There was Dai Puw. He was no good.They put him in the fields to dock swedes,And took the knife from ...
Song at the Year’s Turning (R S Thomas Poems)
Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays.The props crumble; the familiar waysAre stale with tears trodden underfoot.The heart's flower withers ...
The Welsh Hill Country (R S Thomas Poems)
Too far for you to seeThe fluke and the foot-rot and the fat maggotGnawing the skin from the small bones,The ...
Never Despair (R S Thomas Poems)
Do you despair with all these conurbations above you? They are the legions the God- Man was unwilling to summon. After the last symphony, ...
Here (R S Thomas Poems)
I am a man now.Pass your hand over my brow.You can feel the place where the brains grow.I am like ...
In church (R S Thomas Poems)
Often I tryTo analyse the qualityOf its silences. Is this where God hidesFrom my searching? I have stopped to listen,After ...
The Way of It (R S Thomas Poems)
With her fingers she turns paintinto flowers, with her bodyflowers into a remembranceof herself. She is at workalways, mending the ...
Praise (R S Thomas Poems)
I praise you becauseyou are artist and scientistin one. When I am somewhatfearful of your power,your ability to work miracleswith ...
Death Of A Poet (R S Thomas Poems)
Laid now on his smooth bedFor the last time, watching dullyThrough heavy eyelids the day's colourWidow the sky, what can ...
Cynddylan on a Tractor (R S Thomas Poems)
Ah, you should see Cynddylan on a tractor.Gone the old look that yoked him to the soil,He's a new man ...
An Old Man (R S Thomas Poems)
Looking upon this tree with its quaint pretensionOf holding the earth, a leveret, in its claws,Or marking the texture of ...
The Lonely Farmer (R S Thomas Poems)
Poor hill farmer astray in the grass;There came a movement and he looked up, butAll that he saw was the ...
The Chapel (R S Thomas Poems)
A little aside from the main road,becalmed in a last-century greyness,there is the chapel, ugly, without the appealto the tourist ...
The Village (R S Thomas Poems)
Scarcely a street, too few housesTo merit the title; just a way betweenThe one tavern and the one shopThat leads ...
The Ancients of the World (R S Thomas Poems)
The salmon lying in the depths of Llyn Llifon Secretly as a thought in a dark mind,Is not so old as ...
The Dark Well (R S Thomas Poems)
They see you as they see you,A poor farmer with no name,Ploughing cloudward, sowing the windWith squalls of gulls at ...
Female (R S Thomas Poems)
It was the other way round:God waved his slow wandAnd the creature became a woman,Imperceptibly, retaining its body,Nose, brow, lips, ...
The Coming (R S Thomas Poems)
And God held in his handA small globe. Look he said.The son looked. Far off,As through water, he sawA scorched ...