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Three poems from Welsh priest R.S. Thomas
Nationalism gave way to metaphysics
January
The fox drags its wounded belly
Over the snow, the crimson seeds
Of blood burst with a mild explosion,
Soft as excrement, bold as roses.
Over the snow that feels no pity,
Whose white hands can give no healing,
The fox drags its wounded belly.
Song at the Year’s Turning
Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays.
The props crumble; the familiar ways
Are stale with tears trodden underfoot.
The heart’s flower withers at the root.
Bury it then, in history’s sterile dust.
The slow years shall tame your tawny lust.
Love deceived him; what is there to say
The mind brought you by a better way
To this despair? Lost in the world’s wood
You cannot stanch the bright menstrual blood.
The earth sickens; under naked boughs
The frost comes to barb your broken vows.
Is there blessing? Light’s peculiar grace
In cold splendour robes this tortured place
For strange marriage. Voices in the wind
Weave a garland where a mortal sinned.
Winter rots you; who is there to blame?
The new grass shall purge you in its flame.
Epiphany
Three kings? Not even one
any more. Royalty
has gone to ground, its journeyings
over. Who now will bring
gifts and to what place? In
the manger there are only the toys
and the tinsel. The child
has become a man. Far
off from his cross in the wrong
season he sits at table
with us with on his head
the fool’s cap of our paper money.
R.S. Thomas
R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest whose poems celebrated Welsh nationalism, decried modern technology as a temptation for man to reject his spiritual nature, and condemned the anglicization of Wales and Welsh culture. Many of his later poems were more overtly metaphysical, exploring the nature and challenges of belief in God and man’s relationship with the divine. In 1996, he was nominated for but did not win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his admirers was the Nobel Laureate of the previous year, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who read some of Thomas’s poems at a memorial event at Westminster Abbey after Thomas’s death.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Three poems from Welsh priest R.S. Thomas
Nationalism gave way to metaphysics
Three poems from Welsh priest R.S. Thomas
Nationalism gave way to metaphysics
January
The fox drags its wounded belly
Over the snow, the crimson seeds
Of blood burst with a mild explosion,
Soft as excrement, bold as roses.
Over the snow that feels no pity,
Whose white hands can give no healing,
The fox drags its wounded belly.
Song at the Year’s Turning
Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays.
The props crumble; the familiar ways
Are stale with tears trodden underfoot.
The heart’s flower withers at the root.
Bury it then, in history’s sterile dust.
The slow years shall tame your tawny lust.
Love deceived him; what is there to say
The mind brought you by a better way
To this despair? Lost in the world’s wood
You cannot stanch the bright menstrual blood.
The earth sickens; under naked boughs
The frost comes to barb your broken vows.
Is there blessing? Light’s peculiar grace
In cold splendour robes this tortured place
For strange marriage. Voices in the wind
Weave a garland where a mortal sinned.
Winter rots you; who is there to blame?
The new grass shall purge you in its flame.
Epiphany
Three kings? Not even one
any more. Royalty
has gone to ground, its journeyings
over. Who now will bring
gifts and to what place? In
the manger there are only the toys
and the tinsel. The child
has become a man. Far
off from his cross in the wrong
season he sits at table
with us with on his head
the fool’s cap of our paper money.
R.S. Thomas
R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest whose poems celebrated Welsh nationalism, decried modern technology as a temptation for man to reject his spiritual nature, and condemned the anglicization of Wales and Welsh culture. Many of his later poems were more overtly metaphysical, exploring the nature and challenges of belief in God and man’s relationship with the divine. In 1996, he was nominated for but did not win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his admirers was the Nobel Laureate of the previous year, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who read some of Thomas’s poems at a memorial event at Westminster Abbey after Thomas’s death.
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