THREE POEMS for CHRISTMASS by R. S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) was a priest-poet noted for his deep love of Wales who spent much of his life and ministry on the Llyn Peninsula where he died.  It was the landscape of this isolated region, noted for its ancient pilgrimage paths to Bardsey Island, which nurtured his spirituality


Song

I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one

Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness,
But with a sharp song.

[from H’m (1972).]

Blind Noel

Christmas; the themes are exhausted.
Yet there is always room
on the heart for another
snowflake to reveal a pattern.

Love knocks with such frosted fingers.
I look out.  In the shadow
of so vast a God I shiver, unable
to detect the child for the whiteness.

[from No Truce with the Furies (1995).]

Carol

What is Christmas without
snow?  We need it
as bread of a cold
climate, ermine to trim

our sins with, a brief
sleeve for charity’s
scarecrow to wear its heart
on, bold as a robin.

[from Later Poems (1983).]

THE DEAD CHRIST

We came in from the bright lights,
the noise and movement demanding attention,
to this place...

this darkened room where he had been lain.
Placed in the heart with his mother
shedding crystal-tears.

And those who entered stood
with eyes drawn to this figure lying there.

We stood around, and death encountered us.

Death (or was it life)
we saw that moved our world
and, in its stillness, asked of us,
what do you see?