R S Thomas (poet)
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rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
R S Thomas (poet)
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
620 followers 4 following 760 posts
famous Welsh poet in English language 1913-2000
“…catching this / one truth by surprise / that there is everything to look forward to…”
#RSThomas #poetry #barddoniaeth
📍 yng Nghymru, wrth gwrs
facebook.com/groups/RSThomas/
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rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
R S Thomas (poet) @rsthomaspoet.bsky.social · Oct 26
Diolch yn fawr iawn i Martin Roberts @ffoto.bsky.social am y llun hyfryd ac y gwên! Many thanks for this photo, especially the smile!
Black and white photo of head of smiling elderly man
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘In a Country Church’ - #RSThomas
(Song at the Year's Turning, Rupert Hart-Davis)
arealmofwonder.bsky.social Cian McCarthy @arealmofwonder.bsky.social · 2d
Another R.S. Thomas poem
for the 1st Week of Advent.
December 3, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘No’ - #RSThomas
(Poetry, 100.2, (1962): 82)
Text of poem - NO. Once in this corner a man stood, Not of your race; but his thick blood Was dark as yours, the same poison Tainted it at its far source In time and space. He asked no reason For the sure way that his hand turned To violence, nor why in its course The dream blew where the deed had burned. Are you better than he, that the glib questions Multiply at your tongue's tip? That punishment follows the hand's slip More speedily? You have not put on From wardrobes of the elate mind His bright clothes of sunlight and wind.
December 3, 2025 at 8:39 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘The View from the Window’ - #RSThomas
(Poetry for Supper, Rupert Hart-Davis)
buzzbead.bsky.social Buzzbead @buzzbead.bsky.social · 1d
Me too Jan.
They always remind me of this poem by R S Thomas ❤️
December 3, 2025 at 10:31 PM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘In a Country Church’ - #RSThomas
(Song at the Year's Turning, Rupert Hart-Davis)
arealmofwonder.bsky.social Cian McCarthy @arealmofwonder.bsky.social · 2d
Another R.S. Thomas poem
for the 1st Week of Advent.
December 3, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
evelynwaugh.bsky.social
This short portrait of R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) was shown in December 1995 by Bookmark after he had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1996.

youtu.be/H8v-uc-DI7g?...
R.S. Thomas in 1995
YouTube video by Bloodaxe Books
youtu.be
December 2, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
evelynwaugh.bsky.social
A reflection for Advent, featuring the poetry of R. S. Thomas. First broadcast as part of the Church Times and Canterbury Press Advent Retreat in November 2020

youtu.be/qkUFi7cD7qc?...
‘Let me go there’: R. S. Thomas’ Advent God | Carys Walsh
YouTube video by Church Times
youtu.be
December 2, 2025 at 3:51 PM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘No’ - #RSThomas
(Poetry, 100.2, (1962): 82)
Text of poem - NO. Once in this corner a man stood, Not of your race; but his thick blood Was dark as yours, the same poison Tainted it at its far source In time and space. He asked no reason For the sure way that his hand turned To violence, nor why in its course The dream blew where the deed had burned. Are you better than he, that the glib questions Multiply at your tongue's tip? That punishment follows the hand's slip More speedily? You have not put on From wardrobes of the elate mind His bright clothes of sunlight and wind.
December 3, 2025 at 8:39 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘Welsh Landscape’ - #RSThomas
(An Acre of Land, Montgomeryshire Printing Co)
bonesdrawstuff.bsky.social Bantership Potemkin @bonesdrawstuff.bsky.social · 3d
"To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky" Welsh Landscape, R.S. Thomas
December 1, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
arealmofwonder.bsky.social
Today is the first day of Advent, and in an attempt to renew my childhood faith, I recently bought 'Frequencies of God: Walking through Advent with R.S. Thomas' by Carys Walsh, which has a poem from the great man (with subsequent commentary) for every day of this holy season.
November 30, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
#Advent
‘The Coming’ - #RSThomas
(H'm, Macmillan)
Text of poem - The Coming. And God held in his hand A small globe. Look, he said. The son looked. Far off, As through water, he saw A scorched land of fierce Colour. The light burned There; crusted buildings Cast their shadows; a bright Serpent, a river Uncoiled itself, radiant With slime. On a bare Hill a bare tree saddened The sky. Many people Held out their thin arms To it, as though waiting For a vanished April To return to its crossed Boughs. The son watched Them. Let me go there, he said.
November 30, 2025 at 8:20 AM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
Looking for a guide through Advent? Highly Recommended: ‘Frequencies of God - Walking through Advent with R S Thomas’. Carys Walsh writes a reflection on each of 28 poems by the Welsh poet-priest #RSThomas. See canterburypress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/978178...
Frequencies of God Walking through Advent with R S Thomas by Carys Walsh - Paperback / softback - 9781786220882
Buy Frequencies of God Walking through Advent with R S Thomas by Carys Walsh Paperback / softback from Canterbury Press - ISBN: 9781786220882
canterburypress.hymnsam.co.uk
November 29, 2025 at 9:45 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
#Advent
‘The Coming’ - #RSThomas
(H'm, Macmillan)
Text of poem - The Coming. And God held in his hand A small globe. Look, he said. The son looked. Far off, As through water, he saw A scorched land of fierce Colour. The light burned There; crusted buildings Cast their shadows; a bright Serpent, a river Uncoiled itself, radiant With slime. On a bare Hill a bare tree saddened The sky. Many people Held out their thin arms To it, as though waiting For a vanished April To return to its crossed Boughs. The son watched Them. Let me go there, he said.
November 30, 2025 at 8:20 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
Looking for a guide through Advent? Highly Recommended: ‘Frequencies of God - Walking through Advent with R S Thomas’. Carys Walsh writes a reflection on each of 28 poems by the Welsh poet-priest #RSThomas. See canterburypress.hymnsam.co.uk/books/978178...
Frequencies of God Walking through Advent with R S Thomas by Carys Walsh - Paperback / softback - 9781786220882
Buy Frequencies of God Walking through Advent with R S Thomas by Carys Walsh Paperback / softback from Canterbury Press - ISBN: 9781786220882
canterburypress.hymnsam.co.uk
November 29, 2025 at 9:45 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘A Day in Autumn’ - #RSThomas
(Poetry for Supper, Rupert Hart-Davis)
agaguk.bsky.social Agaguk🍺⁠_⁠༼⁠ᴼ⁠ل͜⁠ᴼ⁠༽⁠_🍺 @agaguk.bsky.social · 24d
秋日

罗纳德·斯图亚特·托马斯(Ronald Stuart Thomas, 1913-2000), 英国诗人。著有诗集《田间石头》、《岁末之歌》、《晚餐诗》等。

(张文武 译)

少有这样的天气,
没有风,残留的叶子
点缀着枝头,
为树干编织
金黄的袖口;一只鸟儿

在镜子般的草地上梳理羽毛。
暂时抛开一天的繁杂,
抬起头来,在心里摄下
这明亮的一刻,漫长寒冬里
用它,来温暖自己。

#給孩子讀詩
November 28, 2025 at 8:42 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
3 poems by #RSThomas (published in Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
‘Ivan Karamazov’
‘Now’
‘Somewhere’
youngweather.bsky.social Dustin Ragland @youngweather.bsky.social · 8d
Three poems by RS Thomas for your Wednesday

“Now” is…prescient let’s say

And “Ivan Karamazov” is one of my favorite poems & also of course connected to my favorite book
Ivan Karamazov Yes, I know what he is like : a kind of impossible robot you insert your prayers into like tickets, that after a while are returned to you with the words 'Not granted' written upon them. I repudiate such a god. But if, as you say, he exists, and what I do is an offence to him, let him punish me: I shall not squeal; to be proved right is worth a lifetime's chastisement. And to have God avenging himself is to have the advantage, till the earth opens to receive one into a dark cleft, where, safer than Elijah, one will know him trumpeting in the wind and the fire and the roar of the earthquake, but not in the still, small voice of the worms that deliver one for ever out of the tyranny of his self-love. Now Men, who in their day went down acknowledging defeat, what would they say now, where no superlatives have meaning? What was failure to them, our abandonment of an ideal has turned into high art. Could they with foreknowledge have been happy? Can we, because there are levels not yet descended to, take comfort? Is it sufficient for us that we, like that minority of our fellows in the hurrying centuries, turning aside re-enter the garden? What is the serenity of art worth without the angels at the hot gates, whose sword is time and our uneasy conscience? Somewhere Something to bring back to show you have been there: a lock of God's hair, stolen from him while he was asleep; a photograph of the garden of the spirit. As has been said, the point of travelling is not to arrive, but to return home laden with pollen you shall work up into the honey the mind feeds on. What are our lives but harbours we are continually setting out from, airports at which we touch down and remain in too briefly to recognise what it is they remind us of? And always in one another we seek the proof of experiences it would be worth dying for. Surely there is a shirt of fire this one wore, that is hung up now like some rare fleece in the hall of heroes? Surely these husbands and wives have dipped their marriages in a fast spring? Surely there exists somewhere, as the justification for our looking for it, the one light that can cast such shadows?
November 27, 2025 at 8:50 AM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘Forest Dwellers’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Forest Dwellers. Men who have hardly uncurled from their posture in the womb. Naked. Heads bowed, not in prayer, but in contemplation of the earth they came from, that suckled them on the brown milk that builds bone not brain. Who called them forth to walk in the green light, their thoughts on darkness? Their women, who are not Madonnas, have babes at the breast with the wise, time-ridden faces of the Christ child in a painting by a Florentine master. The warriors prepare poison with love's care for the Sebastians of their arrows. They have no God, but follow the contradictions of a ritual that says life must die that life may go on. They wear flowers in their hair.
November 26, 2025 at 8:34 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘Forest Dwellers’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Forest Dwellers. Men who have hardly uncurled from their posture in the womb. Naked. Heads bowed, not in prayer, but in contemplation of the earth they came from, that suckled them on the brown milk that builds bone not brain. Who called them forth to walk in the green light, their thoughts on darkness? Their women, who are not Madonnas, have babes at the breast with the wise, time-ridden faces of the Christ child in a painting by a Florentine master. The warriors prepare poison with love's care for the Sebastians of their arrows. They have no God, but follow the contradictions of a ritual that says life must die that life may go on. They wear flowers in their hair.
November 26, 2025 at 8:34 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘Evening’ - #RSThomas
(No Truce with the Furies, @BloodaxeBooks)
poemtoday.bsky.social poemtoday.bsky.social @poemtoday.bsky.social · 9d
Evening

The archer with time
as his arrow – has he broken
his strings that the rainbow
is so quiet over our village?

Let us stand, then, in the interval
of our wounding, till the silence
turn golden and love is
a moment eternally overflowing.

R. S. Thomas
November 25, 2025 at 10:32 PM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘The Kingdom’ - #RSThomas
(H'm, Macmillan)
poetryforsupper.bsky.social E.E. Reed @poetryforsupper.bsky.social · 11d
it's a long way off but inside it
there are quite different things going on:
R.S.Thomas. The Kingdom. It's a long way off but inside it There are quite different things going on: Festivals at which the poor man Is king and the consumptive is Healed; mirrors in which the blind look At themselves and love looks at them Back; and industry is for mending The bent bones and the minds fractured By life. It's a long way off, but to get There takes no time and admission Is free, if you will purge yourself Of desire, and present yourself with Your need only and the simple offering Of your faith, green as a leaf.
November 23, 2025 at 10:36 PM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘Ninetieth Birthday’ - #RSThomas
(Tares, Rupert Hart-Davis)
sylphsea.bsky.social Katy Wimhurst @sylphsea.bsky.social · 11d
‘the lichen
That writes history on the page
Of the grey rock’
RS Thomas #nature #
Green lichen on wooden fence
November 23, 2025 at 10:39 PM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘The Kingdom’ - #RSThomas
(H'm, Macmillan)
poetryforsupper.bsky.social E.E. Reed @poetryforsupper.bsky.social · 11d
it's a long way off but inside it
there are quite different things going on:
R.S.Thomas. The Kingdom. It's a long way off but inside it There are quite different things going on: Festivals at which the poor man Is king and the consumptive is Healed; mirrors in which the blind look At themselves and love looks at them Back; and industry is for mending The bent bones and the minds fractured By life. It's a long way off, but to get There takes no time and admission Is free, if you will purge yourself Of desire, and present yourself with Your need only and the simple offering Of your faith, green as a leaf.
November 23, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘The Presence’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#YPresenoldeb #ThePresence
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - The Presence. I pray and incur silence. Some take that silence for refusal. I feel the power that, invisible, catches me by the sleeve, nudging towards the long shelf that has the book on it I will take down and read and find the antidote to an ailment. I know its ways with me; how it enters my life, is present rather before I perceive it, sunlight quivering on a bare wall. Is it consciousness trying to get through? Am I under regard? It takes me seconds to focus, by which time it has shifted its gaze, looking a little to one side, as though I were not here. It has the universe to be abroad in. There is nothing I can do but fill myself with my own silence, hoping it will approach like a wild creature to drink there, or perhaps like Narcissus to linger a moment over its transparent face.
November 23, 2025 at 8:31 AM
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘The Presence’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#YPresenoldeb #ThePresence
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - The Presence. I pray and incur silence. Some take that silence for refusal. I feel the power that, invisible, catches me by the sleeve, nudging towards the long shelf that has the book on it I will take down and read and find the antidote to an ailment. I know its ways with me; how it enters my life, is present rather before I perceive it, sunlight quivering on a bare wall. Is it consciousness trying to get through? Am I under regard? It takes me seconds to focus, by which time it has shifted its gaze, looking a little to one side, as though I were not here. It has the universe to be abroad in. There is nothing I can do but fill myself with my own silence, hoping it will approach like a wild creature to drink there, or perhaps like Narcissus to linger a moment over its transparent face.
November 23, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘The Moor’ - #RSThomas
(Pietà, Rupert Hart-Davis)
November 18, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Reposted by R S Thomas (poet)
rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
‘Llananno’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
arealmofwonder.bsky.social Cian McCarthy @arealmofwonder.bsky.social · 17d
A poem that offers the most exquisite of moments.

'Llananno'
by R.S. Thomas
November 17, 2025 at 10:32 PM