R.S. Thomas Quotes & Sayings

The darkness is the deepening shadow of your presence; the silence a process in the metabolism of the being of love . — R.S. Thomas

Ah, what balance is needed at the edges of such an abyss. I am left 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? — R.S. Thomas

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. — R.S. Thomas

I am a man now. Pass your hand over my brow. You can feel the place where the brains grow. — R.S. Thomas

To live in Wales is to be conscious at dusk of the spilled blood that went into the making of the wild sky — R.S. Thomas

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. — R.S. Thomas

The old men ask for more time; the young waste it. And the philosopher simply smiles, knowing there is none there. — R.S. Thomas

A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes. — R.S. Thomas

Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls, Limp as bindweed, if it break at all Life's iron crust Man, you must sweat And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build Your verse a ladder. — R.S. Thomas

There is always
laughter out of the speeding
vehicles for the man
who is still, half-way though he be
in a better direction. — R.S. Thomas

Somewhere within sight of the tree of poetry that is eternity wearing the green leaves of time . — R.S. Thomas

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. — R.S. Thomas

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. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror's temperature is always zero. It is ice in the veins. It's camera is an x-ray. It is a chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own. — R.S. Thomas

There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon — R.S. Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding 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. — R.S. Thomas

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. — R.S. Thomas

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? — R.S. Thomas

I am alone on the surface of a turning planet. — R.S. Thomas

I turn now not to the Bible but to Wallace Stevens — R.S. Thomas

The meaning is in the waiting, — R.S. Thomas

Verse should be as natural As the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty — R.S. Thomas

Seated at table -
no need for the fracture
of the room's silence; noiselessly
they conversed. — R.S. Thomas

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 ? — R.S. Thomas

Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart. — R.S. Thomas

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 . — R.S. Thomas

Welsh poet R. S. Thomas often complained of having to go out and "perform cultural exceses on Saxon territory," the term he used for reading his poems to English sudiences. — R.S. Thomas

The silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind. — R.S. Thomas

They left no books , Memorial to their lonely thought In grey parishes: rather they wrote On men's hearts and in the minds Of young children sublime words Too soon forgotten. God in his time Or out of time will correct this. — R.S. Thomas

The deep spaces between stars , Fathomless as the cold shadow His mind cast. — R.S. Thomas

Art is recuperation from time. I lie back convalescing upon the prospect of a harvest already at hand. — R.S. Thomas

The View from Europe And that was Africa: the long line to the south little higher than the Atlantic that defined it. The sea rolled its drums on the shore, broke in white foam, flowers for the hair of the girls. I sipped the wind with my nostrils, and the smell was the smell of fear. Two million- year-old skulls surfaced from soil fathoms, grinning their disdain at the accuracy of the new weapons. And that was Eden indeed: Adam was black and the woman, Eve, was black; and the serpent, master of the click languages, spoke to them sibilantly of how the machine would sound as it waited under the tree of death, offering them nothing but a pretence of life. 1988 — R.S. Thomas

Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet. — R.S. Thomas

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.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven. — R.S. Thomas

Confessions of an Anglo-Welshman For my own country's part Her lore and language I should have by heart. 'Twas she who raised me, Built me bone by bone Out of the teeming earth, the dreaming stone. Even at my christening it was she decreed Uprooted I should bleed. And yet for another's sake No wound deletes, No patriotism dulls The true and the beautiful Bequeathed to me by Blake, Shelley and Shakespeare and the ravished Keats. 1943 — R.S. Thomas

Even God had a Welsh name : He spoke to him in the old language; He was to have a peculiar care For the Welsh people. History showed us He was too big to be nailed to the wall Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him Between the boards of a black book . — R.S. Thomas

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 . — R.S. Thomas

Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being ... ultimate reality is what we call God. — R.S. Thomas

Pension Love songs in old age have an edge to them like dry leaves. The tree we planted shakes in the wind of time. Our thoughts are birds that sit in the boughs and remember; we call them down to the remains of poetry. We sit opposite one another at table, parrying our sharp looks with our blunt smiles. 1977 — R.S. Thomas

Somebody Within this world are the great oceans, And on those oceans the dark smudge Of continents and the green islands With towns and cities, their stone sinews Taut under the soft plumage Of dust and smoke. And in those cities Are streets full of people of many colours, Laughing, sighing, whistling tunes Of times and places that are not now. And one I saw a moment ago, Who tried to keep on his poor hearth Of bone the fire from going out; Who tried to grow to the full stature His shadow attained on the hard wall. And his hands were clenched and his feet sore; His mind ached and his brow was charted With care, and fear formed in his veins. Yet he looked up and smiled, as he passed. 1970 — R.S. Thomas

I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow. — R.S. Thomas

I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox. — R.S. Thomas

You have to imagine
a waiting that is not impatient
because it is timeless. — R.S. Thomas

Deliver me from the long drought of the mind . Let leaves from the deciduous Cross fall on us, washing us clean, turning our autumn to gold by the affluence of their fountain. — R.S. Thomas

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. — R.S. Thomas

The nearest we approach God ... is as creative beings. The poet , by echoing the primary imagination , recreates. Through his work he forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them ... nearer to the actual being of God as displayed in action . — R.S. Thomas

To all light things
I compared her: to
a snowflake, a feather — R.S. Thomas

It is too late to start For destinations not of the heart . I must stay here with my hurt. — R.S. Thomas