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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.”
RS Thomas, ‘The Bright Field’ from Laboratories of the Spirit, 1975.
(Thank you Pádraig Ó Tuama)
Manafon by David Sylvian 2009
For the recording of Manafon, Sylvian was also inspired by the Welsh poet R. S. Thomas: lyrics often reflect the main themes written by the poet and the title of the album refers indeed to a Welsh namesake village (in north Powys) in which Thomas lived for a while.
"Manafon is indeed a village in Wales, a village in which Thomas lived for sometime and served as rector to the parish. In this small village, Thomas had trouble filling the pews of a Sunday but in a sense it was something of an idyllic spot in which to raise a child (a strict, taciturn and somewhat indifferent parent), master his profession and write his poetry. So, the physically real village became for me a metaphor for the poetic imagination."
We Met Under A Shower Of Bird-Notes - R.S.Thomas
We met under a shower of bird-notes. Fifty years passed, Love’s moment in a world in servitude to time. She was young; I kissed her with my eyes closed and opened them on her wrinkles. “Come” said death, choosing her as his partner for the last dance. And she, who in life had done everything with a bird’s grace, opened her bill now for the shedding of one sigh no heavier than a feather.
R.S.Thomas
in clean colors
From my files. Middle Creek Road
* * * * *
"It was like a church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in the hand. It was quiet. What God was there made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening of the eye, In movement of the wind over grass. There were no prayers said. But stillness Of the heart’s passions — that was praise Enough; and the mind’s cession Of its kingdom. I walked on, Simple and poor, while the air crumbled And broke on me generously as bread." ~ R.S. Thomas
Cervantes in The Prelude
Cervantes in The Prelude
He rode, I keeping pace with him; and now I fancied that he was the very knight Whose tale Cervantes tells, yet not the knight, But was an arab of the desart too, Of these was neither, and was both at once.
Wordsworth introduces Don Quixoteinto his poem in the mouth of a visionary friend, who is struggling with depression. The whole of Book 5 deals with the subject of reading: it starts with the…
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A Marriage We met under a shower of bird-notes. Fifty years passed, love's moment in a world in servitude to time. She was young; I kissed with my eyes closed and opened them on her wrinkles. 'Come,' said death, choosing her as his partner for the last dance, And she, who in life had done everything with a bird's grace, opened her bill now for the shedding of one sigh no heavier than a feather.
R.S.Thomas, A Marriage
Yesterday was one of those days that can’t be wasted — bright winter sunshine, long shadows on crisp all-day frost — a day for adventure. We have been reading the poems and the entertaining biography, by Byron Rogers, of the Welsh poet, R S Thomas, referred to by Philip Larkin as Arsewipe Thomas whose personality was as fascinating as his poetry which was, though marvellously constructed, at times, patronising and judgemental of the Welsh ‘peasant’ (a strange concept in itself in the second half of the twentieth century). Thomas’s enigmatic personality has intrigued me since I saw him speak in an interview on the television about Wales and the Welsh language, never had I seen someone’s subject so at odds with his delivery! His words were contradicted by all the non-verbal elements of his speech.
Thomas’s identity seemed caught between two cultures and isolated by ‘intellect’, education and calling. He was ordained in the Church of Wales, the Welsh branch of the Episcopal Church, essentially the Church of England, viewed with suspicion by many Welsh, the majority of whom attended Non-conformist Chapels.
He was an Anglican priest who had adopted an affected upper class accent though he was born in Cardiff and brought up in Holyhead, North Wales, but he felt Welsh to his core, learned Welsh as an adult and was an outspoken nationalist.
Yesterday in the sunshine, we went in search of clues to his persona, not with much expectation. We visited his church in Manafon, not far from here —
St Michael’s Church, Manafon, Powys
St Michael’s Church(Eglwys Mihangel Sant) Manafon, Powys
R.S.Thomas’ rectory at Manafon
He was not the first poet to have had the living, the heritage board listed a whole bibliography of bardic priests — R.S. was only the last of many — did that egg him on to write in Welsh — his poetry in the Welsh language never seems to have made the grade which must have frustrated him.
The church was locked but the situation was idyllic with its rectory on the riverside, surrounded by meadows and tall trees.
R.S. Thomas wanted to see the beauty of this landscape reflected in the true Welsh people but they disappointed him seeming brutalised by the harshness of their lives.
You failed me, farmer. I was afraid you would
The day I saw you loitering with the cows.
Yourself one of them but for the smile, […]
For this I leave you
Alone in your harsh acres, herding pennies […] (Valediction)
Apart from poetry, Welshness and a preoccupation with the darkness of other people’s minds, oafs and yokels (The Country Clergyman), R.S. Thomas was a bird watcher — I suspect like an old boss of mine who expressed interest in a trapped bird, flapping itself to a frenzy against a closed sly-light — when I asked if he would like me to get the pole and open the window, he said, ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t bother, I can see now, it’s only a starling!’
The starlings yesterday in Manafon were making their presence felt if only by weight of number. A vast murmuration had settled on tall trees near the church, the wide valley thronged with their chatter. You could have swept them up from the ground.
Starlings — a cloud resting in the trees –
–and on the ground
We drove in a wide arch through the Banwy valley, skirting snow capped Snowdonia, to Eglwys Fach (Little Church) Thomas’s next parish, arriving at dusk, another church dedicated to St Michael and I am reminded of the lines
A little aside from the main road,
becalmed in a last-century greyness, (The Chapel)
Memorial Gate, Eglwys Fach.
Church of St Michael, Eglwys Fach.
This was a Welsh speaking area close to the bird reserve at Ynys Hir but a lot of the parishioners were middle class English ex-pats. In the church yard there are stones inscribed with names that are not Welsh —
Come to Wales
To be buried: the undertaker
Will arrange it for you. We have
The sites and a long line
Of clients going back….
It ends… Dirt cheap, a place where
It is lovely to lie. (Welcome to Wales)
The church was locked — whether to keep God in or keep him out — one cannot tell.
They laid a stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
and thought he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there… (The Empty Church)
R.S. Thomas spent a lot of time waiting for God, but then… The meaning is in the waiting. (Kneeling) Possibly he was looking in the wrong place. In his quest he moved ever Westward.
On the next irresistible day perhaps we will follow him to the far west and the Lleyn peninsula.
Trees behind the church at Eglwys Fach in the last of the sun.
‘I am a man like you,’ but was he? R.S.Thomas (1913-2000) Yesterday was one of those days that can't be wasted -- bright winter sunshine, long shadows on crisp all-day frost -- a day for adventure.
