Poems by R S Thomas

[kino]

Welsh History

We were a people taut for war; the hills
Were no harder, the thin grass
Clothed them more warmly than the coarse
Shirts our small bones.
We fought, and were always in retreat,
Like snow thawing upon the slopes
Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger
Never found our ultimate stand
In the thick woods, declaiming verse
To the sharp prompting of the harp.


Our kings died, or they were slain
By the old treachery at the ford.
Our bards perished, driven form the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble.

We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.
The great were ashamed of our loose rags
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree
Of blood and birth; our lean bellies
And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life.

We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters,
In lands to which we had no claim,
With men for whom we felt no hatred.

We were a people, and are so yet,
When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, we will arise,
Armed, but not in the old way.

A Country

At fifty he was still trying to deceive
Himself. He went out at night,
Imagining the dark country
Between the border and the coast
Was still Wales; the old language
Come to him on the wind’s lips;
There were intimations of farms
Whose calendar was a green hill.

And yet under such skies the land
Had no more right to its name
Than a corpse had; self-given wounds
Wasted it. It lay like a bone
Thrown aside and of no use
For anything except shame to gnaw.


WelshVillage

There was a window
I stood by
in a Welsh village,
myself looking in and he
out, the framed soldier,
waiting for the return
home never to be.

I was along again,
no – was it last week?
not only the soldier
gone, but the house gone, too.


R.S. Thomas (1913 – 2000 )

Acclaimed poet and priest who lamented the ‘cultural suicide’ of his homeland.Bleaker than a spoil heap in a blizzard, R.S. Thomas’s literary output was much as the poet himself appeared to the outside world. He sought refuge in the rural Welsh heartland from where he lambasted his countrymen and modern life in general.

In Welsh Landscape he wrote of “an impotent people, sick with inbreeding, worrying the carcase of an old song”. It is one of his most famous lines, uncompromising, coruscating and unlikely ever to be adopted as marketing slogan.Not that R.S would care. God and the countryside were his great inspirations.“God moves in mysterious ways” he often said “and putting a dog collar on R.S. Thomas was very mysterious indeed.”


Although a parish priest, serving in numerous parishes in North and Mid Wales,he cast a sometimes forbidding figure. The sentiments expressed in his angrier poems tended towards the extreme along with some of his political views.He was a fervent Welsh nationalist and republican who considered Plaid Cymru’s recognition of the British state unacceptable and supported political violence including the burning down of English-owned holiday homes. Yet he married an Englishwoman (“love conquers all”), spoke English with a cut glass Oxford accent, sent his son to public school and accepted the Queen’s Poetry Medal.


R.S. Thomas did not learn Welsh until well into adulthood. Too late, he maintained, to write poetry in the language. Apart from his autobiography Neb (Nobody) and some prose, he worked entirely in English while also lamenting the decline – he called it ‘suicide’- of the old language.


Despite the teeming contradictions, hinting perhaps at the darkly mischievous sense of humour to which he treated his friends, the strength of his poetry should ensure his appeal to future generations.

In his preface to R.S. Thomas’s Song At The Year"s Turning, John Betjeman wrote; "The name which has the honour to introduce this fine poet to a wider public will be forgotten long before that of RS Thomas."

[kokho]

A very detail write-up and comment...

Thanks for sharing, will revert after careful study


_________________
乒乓、摄影、诗歌

[kokho]

His predicaments and outcries are heart-felt for me.

Between 50's - 80's, many of overseas Chinese in South East Asia were depressed by the seemingly decline of Chinese language.

The overwhelming presence English language and the dominance of those applying the language to over-rule the Chinese speaking class, would have made poems like these well appreciated.

But that was another time and another would have been.




.
_________________
乒乓、摄影、诗歌