Neb [No-one] (1985)
Kontext: On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet."
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“Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language”
"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Kontext: Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.
“Yet men sought us despite this.”
"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Kontext: Yet men sought us despite this.
My high cheek-bones, my length of skull
Drew them as to a rare portrait
By a dead master. I saw them stare
From their long cars, as I passed knee-deep
In ewes and wethers. I saw them stand
By the thorn hedges, watching me string
The far flocks on a shrill whistle.
And always there was their eyes; strong
Pressure on me: You are Welsh, they said;
Speak to us so; keep your fields free
Of the smell of petrol, the loud roar
Of hot tractors; we must have peace
And quietness.
"R. S. Thomas in conversation with Molly Price-Owen" in The David Jones Journal R. S. Thomas Special Issue (Summer/Autumn 2001)
Kontext: True Christianity at its most profound is as good as you get. … I think I've been lucky in the period which I've lived through because obviously I would have been for the chop in earlier days. The Inquisition would have rooted me out; even in the 19th century I would probably have been had up by a Bishop and asked to change my views, or to keep them to myself etc.... I think that so much of our Christian beliefs … are an attempt to convey through language something which is unsayable.
"The Country Clergy"
Poetry For Supper (1958)
R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet, BBC TV (2 April 1972)
Kontext: Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth.
"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Kontext: Even God had a Welsh name:
He spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.
“Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.”
"Poetry For Supper"
Poetry For Supper (1958)
Kontext: Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust
Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.
The Penguin Book of Religious Verse (1963), p. 8
“It is alive. It is you,
God. Looking out I can see
no death.”
"Alive", p. 51
Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)
Kontext: It is alive. It is you,
God. Looking out I can see
no death. The earth moves, the
sea moves, the wind goes
on its exuberant
journeys. Many creatures
reflect you, the flowers
your color, the tides the precision
of your calculations. There
is nothing too ample
for you to overflow, nothing
so small that your workmanship
is not revealed.
"R. S. Thomas in conversation with Molly Price-Owen" in The David Jones Journal R. S. Thomas Special Issue (Summer/Autumn 2001)
Kontext: True Christianity at its most profound is as good as you get. … I think I've been lucky in the period which I've lived through because obviously I would have been for the chop in earlier days. The Inquisition would have rooted me out; even in the 19th century I would probably have been had up by a Bishop and asked to change my views, or to keep them to myself etc.... I think that so much of our Christian beliefs … are an attempt to convey through language something which is unsayable.
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet."
Neb [No-one] (1985)
“All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?”
"A Welsh Testament"
Tares (1961)
Kontext: All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?
I spoke a tongue that was passed on
To me in the place I happened to be,
A place huddled between grey walls
Of cloud for at least half the year.
My word for heaven was not yours.
The word for hell had a sharp edge
Put on it by the hand of the wind
Honing, honing with a shrill sound
Day and night. Nothing that Glyn Dwr
Knew was armour against the rain's
Missiles. What was descent from him?
“Ah, what balance is needed at
the edges of such an abyss.”
"Threshold", p. 110
Between Here and Now (1981)
Kontext: Ah, what balance is needed at
the edges of such an abyss.
I am left alone on the surface
of a turning planet. What to do but, like Michelangelo’s
Adam, put my hand
out into unknown space,
hoping for the reciprocating touch?
“You have to imagine
a waiting that is not impatient
because it is timeless.”
R.S. Thomas
buch
The Echoes Return Slow
Quelle: "The Echoes Return Slow" in The Echoes Return Slow (1988)
“I turn now
not to the Bible
but to Wallace Stevens”
"Homage to Wallace Stevens"
No Truce with the Furies (1995)
"R. S. Thomas in conversation with Molly Price-Owen" in The David Jones Journal R. S. Thomas Special Issue (Summer/Autumn 2001)
"A Person From Porlock"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)
"Homage to Wallace Stevens"
No Truce with the Furies (1995)
"Children’s Song"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)
"Poetry For Supper"
Poetry For Supper (1958)
"In a Country Church"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)
“There was a larger pattern
we worked at: they on a big
loom, I with a small needle.”
"In Context", p. 13
Frequencies (1978)
R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet, BBC TV (2 April 1972)
