R S Thomas (poet)
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rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
R S Thomas (poet)
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.social
610 followers 4 following 750 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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#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
Diolch, thank you, unfortunately there’s a mistake in the version she’s used: it should read: “that had *the* treasure in it” - this changes the meaning and rhythm of the phrase.
Here’s the correct version…
‘The Bright Field’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
Text of poem - The Bright Field. 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 the treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. 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.
November 27, 2025 at 9:40 AM
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‘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
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‘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
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‘Flowers’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Blodau #Flowers
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Flowers. But behind the flower is that other flower which is ageless, the idea of the flower, the one we smell when we imagine it, that as often as it is picked blossoms again, that has the perfection of all flowers, the purity without the fragility. Was it a part of the plan for humanity to have flowers about it? They are many and beautiful, with faces that are a reminder of those of our own children, though they come painlessly from the bulb's womb. We trouble them as we go by, so they hang their heads at our unreal progress. If flowers had minds, would they not think they were the colour eternity is, a window that gives on a still view the hurrying people must come to and stare at and pass by?
November 19, 2025 at 8:08 AM
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Clods or clouds - part 2
(ref: A Peasant).
As a result of feedback on my post on this topic a few days ago, I asked Prof. Tony Brown (RS Thomas Research Centre, Bangor University) about it. Here’s what came from that…
Text - Clods or clouds - part 2 (ref: A Peasant): As a result of feedback on my post on this topic a few days ago, I asked Prof. Tony Brown (RS Thomas Research Centre, Bangor University) about it. It seems it's a known problem and he said he thinks clouds is a simple oversight/typographical error. Apparently its history is more complicated than I thought, because of the following sequence: - The Stones of the Field- clouds - Song at the Year's Turning - clods - Selected Poems 1946-68 - clods - Poems of R. S. Thomas (1985) University of Arkansas Press - clods - Collected Poems 1945-1990 - clouds - Selected Poems (Penguin) - clouds. Tony suggests that the inconsistency arises according to which source the compiler uses, so those who (understandably) use its first publication (The Stones of the Field) are unwittingly repeating the mistake!
November 17, 2025 at 2:37 PM
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‘Bent’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Bent. Heads bowed over the entrails, over the manuscript, the block, over the rows of swedes. Do they never look up? Why should one think that to be on one's knees is to pray? The aim is to walk tall in the sun. Did the weight of the jaw bend their backs, keeping their vision below the horizon? Two million years in straightening them out, and they are still bent over the charts, the instruments, the drawing-board, the mathematical navel that is the wink of God.
November 16, 2025 at 8:12 AM
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Clods or clouds?!
A mistake in a published poem of #RSThomas ! You might want to amend your copy. Explanation and correct version attached…
(thanks to Lee @seventyninelee.bsky.social for spotting this)
Text - Clods or clouds?! On Remembrance Sunday I posted the poem 'A Peasant' on Bluesky and on Facebook, and someone queried whether 'clouds' should actually be 'clods' in line 7. And they are right! It's 'clods' in 'The Stones of the Field' and in 'Song at the Year's Turning' but then it's wrongly 'clouds' in 'Collected Poems 1945-1990', both the printed and ebook versions. And of course clods makes more sense than clouds in context. So you might want to amend your copy. Here's the correct version... Text of poem - A Peasant. lago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed, Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills, Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud. Docking mangels, chipping the green skin From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth To a stiff sea of clods that glint in the wind-So are his days spent, his spittled mirth Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week. And then at night see him fixed in his chair Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire. There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind. His clothes, sour with years of sweat And animal contact, shock the refined, But affected, sense with their stark naturalness. Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season Against siege of rain and the wind's attrition, Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress Not to be stormed even in death's confusion. Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars, Enduring like a tree under the curious stars. - RS Thomas
November 14, 2025 at 8:46 AM
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Remembrance:
‘Pact’ - #RSThomas
(Uncollected Poems, @BloodaxeBooks)
Text of poem - Pact. This is my child; that is yours. Let peace be between them when they grow up. They are far off now; let it not be through war they are brought near. Their languages are different. Let them both learn it is peace in the hand is the translation of peace in the mind. RS Thomas A field of red and white poppies in bloom.
November 11, 2025 at 7:53 AM
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“Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars, Enduring like a tree under the curious stars.”

‘A Peasant’ - #RSThomas
(The Stones of the Field, Druid Press)
#Remembrance
Text of poem - A Peasant. lago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed, Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills, Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud. Docking mangels, chipping the green skin From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth To a stiff sea of clouds that glint in the wind - So are his days spent, his spittled mirth Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week. And then at night see him fixed in his chair Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire. There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind. His clothes, sour with years of sweat And animal contact, shock the refined, But affected, sense with their stark naturalness. Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season Against siege of rain and the wind's attrition, Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress Not to be stormed even in death's confusion. Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars, Enduring like a tree under the curious stars. A field of red and white poppies in bloom.
November 9, 2025 at 8:52 AM
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‘The New Mariner’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - The New Mariner. 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? For me now there is only the God-space into which I send out my probes. 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, garrulous about them, worrying the ear of the passer-by, hot on his way to the marriage of plain fact with plain fact.
November 5, 2025 at 8:15 AM
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‘Harvest End’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan)
- from the Welsh of William Williams (Caledfryn)
Text of poem - Harvest End. (From the Welsh of Caledfryn) The seasons fly; the flowers wither; the leaves lie on the ground. Listen to the sad song of the reapers: Ripe corn', as over the sea the birds go. Suddenly the year ends. The wind rages; everything in its path breaks. Dire weather; in front of a stick fire, fetched from the forest, firm and infirm cower within doors. The longest of lives too soon slips by. Careers fold and with them good looks fade. Spring's bloom is spent, summer is done, too. With a rush we come to winter in the grave. Testun y gerdd - Diwedd y Cynhaeaf. Tymhorau ehedant, A blodau a wywant, A dail a orweddant Ar hyd y llawr; Medelwyr a ganant, Ÿd aeddfed a gludant, Adar ehedant Dros y môr mawr. Ar frys daw'r llym Aaea', Ei wynt a ysgythra, Pob peth o'i flaen wyga, Daw'n dywydd du; Wrth dân goleuedig O friwydd o'r goedwig Bydd sionc a methedig Yn llechu'n tỷ. Ar fyr yr ymlithra Fel hyn yr oes hwya', Fe dderfydd yr yrfa, Gwywa'r hardd wedd; Dy Wanwyn di ddarfu, Mae d'Haf dithau i fyny, Down toc i aeafu I dy y bedd. William Williams (Caledfryn)
November 2, 2025 at 8:48 AM
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‘Senior’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Hŷn #Senior
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Senior. At sixty there are still fables to outgrow, the possessiveness of language. There is no book of life with the pen ready to delete one's name. Judgment days are the trials we attend here, whose verdict the future has no interest in. Is there a sentence without words? God is a mode of prayer; cease speaking and there is only the silence. Has he his own media of communication? What is a galaxy's meaning? The stars relay to the waste places of the earth, as they do to the towns, but it is a cold message. There is randomness at the centre, agitation subsisting at the heart of what would be endless peace. A man's shadow falls upon rocks that are millions of years old, and thought comes to drink at that dark pool, but goes away thirsty.
October 29, 2025 at 9:39 AM
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‘Mediterranean’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Mediterranean. The water is the same; it is the reflections are different. Virgil looked in this mirror. You would not think so. The lights' jewellery sticks in the throat of the fish; open them, you will find a debased coinage to pay your taxes. The cicadas sing on. Looking for them among the ilex is like trying to translate a poem into another language.
October 26, 2025 at 8:23 AM
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‘The Bush’ - #RSThomas
(Later Poems, 1972–1982, Macmillan London)
#Hydref #Autumn
Text of poem - The Bush. I know that bush, Moses; there are many of them in Wales in the autumn, braziers where the imagination warms itself. I have put off pride and, knowing the ground holy, lingered to wonder how it is that I do not burn and yet am consumed. And in this country of failure, the rain falling out of a black cloud in gold pieces there are none to gather, I have thought often of the fountain of my people that played beautifully here once in the sun's light like a tree undressing.
October 22, 2025 at 12:58 PM
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‘The Seasons’ - #RSThomas
(Mass for Hard Times, @BloodaxeBooks)
#Hydref #Autumn
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Autumn. Happy the leaves burnishing their own downfall. Life dances upon life's grave. It is we who inject sadness into the migrant's cry. We are so long in dying - time granted to discover a purpose in our decay? Could we be cut open, would there be more than the saw's wound, all humanity's rings widening only towards ageing? To creep in for shelter under the bone's tree is to be charred by time's lightning stroke. The leaves fall variously as do thoughts to reveal the bareness of the mind's landscape through which we must press on towards the openness of its horizons.
October 19, 2025 at 7:42 AM
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‘One Way’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - One Way. There was a frontier I crossed whose passport was human speech. Looking back was to silence, to that wood of hands fumbling for the unseen thing. I named it and it was here. I held out words to them and they smelled them. Space gave, time was eroded. There was one being would not reply. God, I whispered, refining my technique, signalling to him on the frequencies I commanded. But always amid the air's garrulousness there was the one station that remained closed. Was there an alternative medium? There were some claimed to be able to call him down to drink insatiably at the dark sumps of blood.
October 15, 2025 at 7:51 AM
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‘Seventieth Birthday’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Seventieth Birthday. Made of tissue and H20, and activated by cells firing - Ah, heart, the legend of your person ! Did I invent it, and is it in being still? In the competition with other women your victory is assured. It is time, as Yeats said, is the caterpillar in the cheek's rose, the untiring witherer of your petals. You are drifting away from me on the whitening current of your hair. I lean far out from the bone's bough, knowing the hand I extend can save nothing of you but your love.
October 12, 2025 at 7:05 AM
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Bu farw Vernon Watkins ar y diwrnod hwn ym 1967. Dyma deyrnged serchog gan fardd Cymreig arall, ei ffrind RS Thomas…
Vernon Watkins died on this day in 1967. Here's an affectionate tribute by another Welsh poet, his friend RS Thomas…
‘The Bank Clerk’ (Uncollected Poems, Bloodaxe Books)
Text of poem - The Bank Clerk. It was not the shillings he heard, But the clinking of the waves In the gullies and rocks of Pwll Du. Turning them over To the customers at the counter He offered them the rich change Of his mind, the real coinage Of language for their dry cheques. Punctually in the evenings At Pennard he returned to The poem's sum, wrestling with it For delight, but with the sea's Care, that on the blank sand Tots itself. Clerks, businessmen, Grousers about the cost Of a poet, he has balanced honourably His accounts, but - what about you?
October 8, 2025 at 8:27 AM
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‘Aleph’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
October 5, 2025 at 6:48 AM
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‘Arriving’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Cyrraedd #Arriving
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Arriving. A maze, he said, and at the centre the Minotaur awaits us. There are turnings that are no through road to the fearful. By one I came travelling it like a gallery of the imagination, pausing to look at the invisible portraits of brave men. Their deeds rustled like dry leaves under my tread. The scent of them was the dust we throw in the eyes of the beast.
October 1, 2025 at 7:21 AM
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‘Voices’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan
#Lleisiau #Voices
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem
Text of poem - Voices. Who to believe? The linnet sings bell-like, a tinkling music. It says life is contained here; is a jewel in a shell casket, lying among down. There is another voice, far out in space, whose persuasiveness is the distance from which it speaks. Divided mind, the message is always in two parts. Must it be on a cross it is made one?
September 28, 2025 at 7:22 AM
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By all accounts this was a wonderful event in Bangor Cathedral on Thursday, marking 25 years since the death of RS Thomas. It included talks, art and photography, beautiful music and of course poetry reading. Here’s a link to a recording of the event: www.youtube.com/live/RbFUoWF...
September 27, 2025 at 9:36 PM
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Welsh poet #RSThomas died 25 years ago #OnThisDay in 2000.
Here’s his poem ‘Swallows’ (published in ‘No Truce with the Furies’ by @BloodaxeBooks)
Text of poem - Swallows. To the swallows: 'See you next year.' These swallows? No matter. On the wires will be swallows, the music of time in customary notation. Not like me whose migrations are endless, though my perch be of bone. One April I will return to it no more. As nature replaces its creatures so life will replace me, a migrant between nominatives, a new singer of an old song, an innovator too regardless of time for the time-keeping swallows.
September 25, 2025 at 7:41 AM
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Bu farw'r bardd Cymreig #RSThomas 25 ones #ArYDiwrnodHwn yn 2000. Dyma'i gerdd 'Swallows' (cyhoeddwyd yn ‘No Truce with the Furies’ gan @BloodaxeBooks)
Text of poem - Swallows. To the swallows: 'See you next year.' These swallows? No matter. On the wires will be swallows, the music of time in customary notation. Not like me whose migrations are endless, though my perch be of bone. One April I will return to it no more. As nature replaces its creatures so life will replace me, a migrant between nominatives, a new singer of an old song, an innovator too regardless of time for the time-keeping swallows.
September 25, 2025 at 7:35 AM