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R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

Although this account is paused on here, it’s now active in a different place where the sky is always blue. Perhaps take a look at https://bsky.app/profile/rsthomaspoet.bsky.social ?
#RSThomas
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Colour photo of elderly balding man, seated in front of full bookshelves, laughing happily

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

If you’re thinking of a different place, perhaps take a look at @rsthomaspoet.bsky.social ?
#RSThomas
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Colour photo of RS Thomas: an elderly, balding man laughing happily. He’s seated in front of shelves full of books, and wearing his trademark red tie.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Farming Peter’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
FARMING PETER.
and there the scarecrow walked over the surface of the brown breakers tattered like Christ himself and the man went at his call with the fathoms under him and because of his faith in the creation of his own hands he was buoyed up floundering but never sinking scalded by the urine of the skies deaf to the voices calling from the high road telling him his Saviour's face was of straw.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Self-portrait’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
#Hunanbortread #SelfPortrait
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
SELF-PORTRAIT.
That resigned look! Here I am, it says; fifty-nine, balding, shirking the challenge of the young girls. Time running out now, and the soul unfinished. And the heart knows this is not the portrait it posed for. Keep the lips firm; too many disappointments have turned the mouth down at the corners. There is no surgery can mend those lines; cruelly the light fingers them and the mind winces. All that skill, life, on the carving of the curved nostril and to no end but disgust. The hurrying eyes pause, waiting for an outdistanced gladness to overtake them.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘The Reception’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
THE RECEPTION.
The clouds were brown like the landscape. Sullen men worked there, fingering their scars. The brown got into their minds so that they could not see God. It concerned him at times. He arrayed himself in bright green, but the winds of that place burned him; he was a ghost unnoticed, a body nailed to a dead tree. When he came down no one rejoiced; he was as dry leaves blowing, flimsy integument of the hard soil. He withdrew to consider, rejuvenating himself at the mind's sources. White, he thought; I will visit this people as a white bird, my feathers their winter. They perceived him then; fell upon him in silence, seeking for the brown soil he deprived them of, trampling him into it.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Hallowe’en’ - #RSThomas
(No Truce with the Furies, @BloodaxeBooks)
#NosCalanGaeaf #Halloween
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
Hallowe'en.
Outside a surfeit of planes. Inside the hunger of the departed to come back. 'Ah, erstwhile humans, would you make your mistakes over again? In life, as in love, the second time round is no better.' I confront their expressions in the embers, on grey walls: faces among the stones watching me to see if this night of all nights I will make sacrifice to the spirits of hearth and of roof-tree, pouring a libation. 'Stay where you are,' I implore. 'This is no world for escaped beings to make their way back into. The well that you took your pails to is polluted. At the centre of the mind's labyrinth the machine howls for the sacrifice of the affections; vocabulary has on a soft collar but the tamed words are not to be trusted. As long as the flames hum, making their honey, better to look in upon truth's comb than to take off as we do on fixed wings for depollinated horizons.'

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Welsh Summer’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
WELSH SUMMER.
They blow on their horns; the valleys are full of echoes; voices from vanished kingdoms answer them from their recesses in time. Here there is no sleep for the dead; they are resurrected to mourn. Everywhere is the sad chorus of an old people, waking to weep. It is the machine wins; the land suffers the formication of its presence. Places that would have preferred peace have had their bowels opened; our children paddle thoughtlessly there in the mess.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘He is sometimes contrary’ #RSThomas
(What is a Welshman? - Christopher Davies Publishers, Llandybie)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
He is sometimes contrary.
No poem to be dialled? No, 1 wouldn't help. I was not available to you for two new pence .... If I told you that Catraeth has always to be re-fought; that the birds of Rhiannon will never be heard in your suburban garden; that office hours are the best time to pluck trout from the silver branches of the streams of Mawddwy. If I brought thirst upon you that the dusty beer of your addiction could not allay ... How would that have comforted you?

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘On a diet of warmed-up music’ - #RSThomas
(What is a Welshman? - Christopher Davies Publishers, Llandybie)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
On a diet of warmed-up music.
His favourite instrument the harmonium-such breathless music! When asthma afflicts the arts, what hope for the prosaic millions, whose search is for strings to pull? He once had the harp, the goddess with gold ribs; but long ago now her feathers were plucked. By an old hearth's ashes she sits and shivers.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Harvest End’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
Harvest End.
(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.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘He has the vote’ - #RSThomas
(What is a Welshman? - Christopher Davies Publishers, Llandybie)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
He has the vote.
and a stupendous future awaits this little— VOTE TORY-this little nation of . ... What does crachach mean? (Every drop of water is worth its weight in tears, but they are running out now like the variations on the cynghanedd.) VOTE LABOUR and protect your class. There is an aristocracy of the pit, too. VOTE LIBERAL and allow England to enjoy your prospects. VOTE PLAID, mun and be damned for your own sake.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘He lives here’ - #RSThomas
(What is a Welshman? - Christopher Davies Publishers, Llandybie)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
He lives here
and he showed it to me and I recognised it by its smell the smell of chapels gone sour and I said God deliver me from the womb that is stubborn to bear and I lay on the bleak hills black with the dust of coal not yet mined and they stood round with white faces and the old familiar slang of the valleys was on the lips of the wind welcome boi bach fallen among the slag and clinkers of time with a language filched from the dictionary of the tribes we await your sermon and a pulpit grew up under my feet and I climbed into it and it was the cage of the mine-shaft down down down to preach to the lost souls of the coal-face reminding how green is the childhood of a glib people taunting them with the abandonment of the national for the class struggle

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Drive’ - #RSThomas
(Young and Old, Chatto & Windus)
#Gyrru #Drive
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
DRIVE.
Came by Rhondda, many stops, Many escapes; traffic lights Always against me; the speed-cops Following close, so that the girls At the shop corners went unnoticed. At Penderyn two 'buses Across the road; swerved round them With cool nerve- test my breath For alcohol; it stays clear, The colour. Binding myself To a strict schedule, I came down To Builth town from high Eppynt Punctually, and crossed the Wye In bright dust, braking rarely For tractors, for horses, for slow cows And cowmen. Filled the tank At Rhaeadr and drank in The atmosphere, and so off Once more, opening the throttle For the long climb over Pumlumon. Home on the dot.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘The Bush’ - #RSThomas
(Later Poems, 1972–1982, Macmillan London)
#Llwyn #Bush
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
The Bush.
I know that bush, Moses; there are many of them in Wales in the autumn, braziers where the imagination warms itself. I have put off pride and, knowing the ground holy, lingered to wonder how it is that I do not burn and yet am consumed. And in this country of failure, the rain falling out of a black cloud in gold pieces there are none to gather, I have thought often of the fountain of my people that played beautifully here once in the sun's light like a tree undressing.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘The Seasons’ - #RSThomas
(Mass for Hard Times, @BloodaxeBooks)
#YrHydref #Autumn
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
Autumn.
Happy the leaves burnishing their own downfall. Life dances upon life's grave. It is we who inject sadness into the migrant's cry. We are so long in dying - time granted to discover a purpose in our decay? Could we be cut open, would there be more than the saw's wound, all humanity's rings widening only towards ageing? To creep in for shelter under the bone's tree is to be charred by time's lightning stroke. The leaves fall variously as do thoughts to reveal the bareness of the mind's landscape through which we must press on towards the openness of its horizons.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

'You' - #RSThomas
(Young and Old, Chatto & Windus)
#Chi #You
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
YOU
You go into the street, And the world's there: The same helping of air As the rich have, No more worn; The clouds tidy. History hurt itself To bring forth you. Leaves fling their gold Cloak in your path. At the top of a tall tower The sun stands telling The time of your life. God with his own hand Formed that ear At which the shrill sound Of the juke-box arrives.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Budleia’ - #RSThomas
(Young and Old, Chatto & Windus)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
BUDLEIA.
Now at last but they are late this year the budleia and the daisy the one with the sunlight in it I mean appear and the fruit grows heavy but will not ripen in time so the striped wasps take it to live in they ruin their houses and fall glutted to the ground where the foot cracks their armour and out of the flower the voice comes and will not alter its meaning. I stand here interpreting while the road sports its noises but the daisies the ones with sunlight in them and the pale budleia that was so late in opening will be done soon.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Bang’ - #RSThomas
(Young and Old, Chatto & Windus)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
BANG.
You shoot; I fall down. You exult, changing To grief, if I lie Long. But I resurrect From kindness, and we dance Together under the New sky that will see Sterner wars.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Decline’ - #RSThomas
(Young and Old, Chatto & Windus)
#Dirywiad #Decline
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
DECLINE.
It is not that In intelligence they gain, A comfortable compensation For the lack of Muscle power. Not only Must they endure the dark At the table's bottom, be laid Flat on their backs in rings, Come in last, when the cheers Have died. They must see art, Science, too, in recession From their borders, while nations, Who have not yet begun To cut their teeth, show them The muse and calculus In alliance. All they master Now is an amiable Decency, which, if not over-taxed, Can adhere still More or less to its own standards.

R S Thomas (poet) @RSThomasPoet@toot.wales

‘Sub-Post Office’ - #RSThomas
(Young and Old, Chatto & Windus)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
SUB-POST OFFICE.
Margiad Davies, forty-three Years old and unmarried. She lives in the village post Office and has become used To its smell. Mornings when You call and the rain fences Her in you see how pale She is and how enlarged Her goitre and are sorry as You move off, leaving your looks Sticking in her and your money Like a reproach upon the counter.

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