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R. S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas

Threshold

I emerge from the mind’s
cave into the worse darkness
outside, where things pass and
the Lord is in none of them.
 
I have heard the still, small voice
and it was that of the bacteria
demolishing my cosmos. I
have lingered too long on
 
this threshold, but where can I go?
To look back is to lose the soul
I was leading upwards towards
the light. To look forward? Ah,
 
what balance is needed at
the edges of such an abyss.
I am 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?

#WelshWriters

Altre opere di R. S. Thomas...
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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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A Blackbird Singing

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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The Village

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Coming home was to that: The white house in the cool grass Membraned with shadow, the bright… Of stream that was its looking—gla… And smoke growing above the roof
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I look out over the timeless sea over the head of one, calendar to time’s passing, who is now open at the last month, her hair wintry… Am I catalyst of her mettle that,
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Together

All my life I was face to face with her, at meal—times, by the fire, even in the ultimate intimacies
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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
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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”



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