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R. S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas

Taliesin

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.
 
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.
 
I have been Glyn Dwr set in the vast night,
Scanning the stars for the propitious omen,
A leader of men, yet cursed by the crazed women
Mourning their dead under the same stars.
 
I have been Goronwy, forced from my own land
To taste the bitterness of the salt ocean;
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.

#WelshWriters

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Préféré par...
Joe Marflak
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It will not always be like this, The air windless, a few last Leaves adding their decoration To the trees’ shoulders, braiding… Of the boughs with gold; a bird pr…
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Reflections

The furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address… Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them.
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Sorry

Dear parents, I forgive you my life, Begotten in a drab town, The intention was good; Passing the street now,
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Ninetieth Birthday

You go up the long track That will take a car, but is best… On slow foot, noting the lichen That writes history on the page Of the grey rock. Trees are about…
The White Tiger

It was beautiful as God must be beautiful: glacial eyes that had looked on violence and come to terms with it; a body too huge
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The Other

There are nights that are so still that I can hear the small owl call… far off and a fox barking miles away. It is then that I lie in the lean hours awake listening
To a Young Poet

For the first twenty years you are… Bodily that is: as a poet, of cour… You are not born yet. It’s the ne… You cut your teeth on to emerge sm… For your brash courtship of the mu…
Here

I am a man now. Pass your hand over my brow. You can feel the place where the b… I am like a tree, From my top boughs I can see
He and She

When he came in, she was there. When she looked at him, he smiled. There were lights in time’s wave breaking on an eternal shore.
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The Cat and the Sea

It is a matter of a black cat On a bare cliff top in March Whose eyes anticipate The gorse petals; The formal equation of
Children’s Song

We live in our own world, A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge.
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Praise

I praise you because you are artist and scientist in one. When I am somewhat fearful of your power, your ability to work miracles
Song for Gwydion

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…
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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
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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



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