R. S. Thomas Zitate

seite 2

“I had looked forward
to old age as a time
of quietness, a time to draw
my horizons about me,
to watch memories ripening
in the sunlight of a walled garden.
But there is the void
over my head and the distance
within that the tireless signals
come from. And astronaut
on impossible journeys
to the far side of the self
I return with messages
I cannot decipher.”

“In the silence
that is his chosen medium
of communication and telling
others about it
in words. Is there no way
not to be the sport
of reason?”

“It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes’
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.”

“I have been all men known to history,
Wondering at the world and at time passing;
I have seen evil, and the light blessing
Innocent love under a spring sky.”

“Sometimes a strange light
shines, purer than the moon,
casting no shadow, that is
the halo upon the bones
of the pioneers who died for truth.”

“Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.”

“It is too late to start
For destinations not of the heart.
I must stay here with my hurt.”

“I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in
the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and
falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village that is without
light
and companionless. And the
thought comes
of that other being who is
awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.”

“Now the power of the imagination is a unifying power, hence the force of metaphor; and the poet is the supreme manipulator of metaphor… the world needs the unifying power of the imagination. The two things that give it best are poetry and religion.”

“I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox.”

“She is young. Have I the right
Even to name her? Child,
It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies.”

“Let despair be known
as my ebb-tide; but let prayer
have its springs, too, brimming,
disarming him; discovering somewhere
among his fissures deposits of mercy
where trust may take root and grow.”

“Why are my hands this way
That they will not do as i say?
Does no God hear when I pray?”

“Is a museum
Peace? I asked. Am I the keeper
Of the heart's relics, blowing the dust
In my own eyes? I am a man;
I never wanted the drab role
Life assigned me, an actor playing
To the past's audience upon a stage
Of earth and stone; the absurd label
Of birth, of race hanging askew
About my shoulders. I was in prison
Until you came; your voice was a key
Turning in the enormous lock
Of hopelessness. Did the door open
To let me out or yourselves in?”

“I am like a tree,
From my top boughs I can see
The footprints that led up to me.”

“somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.”

“I am a man now.
Pass your hand over my brow.
You can feel the place where the brains grow.”

“I have been Merlin wandering in the woods
Of a far country, where the winds waken
Unnatural voices, my mind broken
By a sudden acquaintance with man’s rage.”

“"Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen."
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.”

“I have known exile and a wild passion
Of longing changing to a cold ache.
King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns,
Knowing the body’s sweetness, the mind’s treason;
Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen,
Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.”

“The deep spaces between stars,
Fathomless as the cold shadow
His mind cast.”

“Is there a place
here for the spirit? Is there time
on this brief platform for anything
other than mind's failure to explain itself?”

“Art is recuperation
from time. I lie back
convalescing upon the prospect
of a harvest already at hand.”

“What was the shell doing,
on the shore? An ear endlessly
drinking?
What? Sound? Silence?
Which came first?
Listen.”

“The darkness
is the deepening shadow
of your presence; the silence a
process in the metabolism
of the being of love.”

“It was not
I who lived, but life rather
that lived me.”

“All art is anonymous.”