The Small Window by R. S. Thomas In Wales there are jewels To gather, but with the eye Only. A hill lights up Suddenly; a field trembles With colour and goes out 1 1
The Absence by R. S. Thomas It is this great absence that is like a presence, that comp me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter from which someone has just
The Village by R. S. Thomas Scarcely a street, too few houses To merit the title; just a way bet The one tavern and the one shop That leads nowhere and fails at th Of the short hill, eaten away
A Blackbird Singing by R. S. Thomas It seems wrong that out of this bi Black, bold, a suggestion of dark Places about it, there yet should Such rich music, as though the not Ore were changed to a rare metal
Song for Gwydion by R. S. Thomas When I was a child and the soft f Quietly as snow on the bare bough My father brought me trout from th From whose chill lips the water so Dull grew their eyes, the beautifu
Poste Restante by R. S. Thomas I want you to know how it was, whether the Cross grinds into dust under men’s wheels or shines brigh as a monument to a new era. There was a church and one man
Perspectives by R. S. Thomas Beasts rearing from green slime— an illiterate country, unable to r its own name. Stones moved into po on the hills’ sides; snakes laid t in their cold shadow. The earth su
Walter Llywarch by R. S. Thomas I am, as you know, Walter Llywarc Born in Wales of approved parents Well goitred, round in the bum, Sure prey of the slow virus Bred in quarries of grey rain.
The Way of It by R. S. Thomas With her fingers she turns paint into flowers, with her body flowers into a remembrance of herself. She is at work always, mending the garment
I Was Vicar of Large Things by R. S. Thomas 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”