SMALL COUNTRY, LARGE POETRY

I will be among those ordering a book of the poetry of the recently-announced winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Swedish poet Thomas Transtromer. In the meantime, the announcement brings to mind another small-country (and, in his case, back country) writer, R.S. Thomas, the Welsh priest and poet who died in 2000, and who was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize. 

Nobel or not, I agree with those who say that Thomas’ place in history will match that of John Donne or George Herbert. That is to say, he will be ranked among the greatest of religious poets. (Although for Thomas, “religious” has as much to do with doubt as with faith.)

Here are three by R.S. Thomas

The Empty Church

They laid this stone trap

for him, enticing him with candles,

as though he would come like some huge moth

out of the darkness to beat there.

Ah, he had burned himself

before in the human flame

and escaped, leaving the reason

torn. He will not come any more

to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still

striking my prayers on a stone

heart? Is it in hope one

of them will ignite yet and throw

on its illumined walls the shadow

of someone greater than I can understand?

Near and Far

No one so busy

as you are. Where is that

seventh day when you rest

from your labour? I arise

from sleep to find that

you have been all night growing.

And by day you are abroad

endlessly exploring a circumference

by which you are not confined.

You have no words yet vibrate

in me with the resonance of an Amen.

You are strung with light

as with nerves across which

thought is drawn to deliver

intellectual music. Sometimes

you are an impulse upon my walls,

at others a modifying

of unseen organisms, slowly

and delicately as a mutation;

but always as far off

as you are near, terrifying

me as much by your proximity

as by your being light-years away.

A Marriage

We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love's moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
`Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance, and she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather. 

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More about R.S. Thomas here and here.