After the Lecture by R.S. Thomas

I am asking the difficult question. I need help.  

I’m not asking from ill will.

I have no desire to see you coping 

Or not coping with unmanageable coils 

Of a problem frivolously called up 

I’ve read your books, had glimpses of a climate 

That is rigorous, though not too hard 

For the spirit. I may have grown 

Since reading them; there is no scale

To judge by, neither is the soul 

Measurable. I know all the tropes

Of religion, how God is not there 

To go to; how time is what we buy 

With his absence, and how we look 

Through the near end of the binocular at pain, 

Evil, deformity. I have tried 

Bandaging my sharp eyes 

With humility, but still the hearing 

Of the ear holds; from as far off as Tibet 

The cries come.

From one not to be penned 

In a concept, and differing in kind 

From the human; whose attributes are the negations 

Of thought; who holds us at bay with 

His symbols, the opposed emblems 

Of hawk and dove, what can my prayers win 

For the kindred, souls brought to the bone 

To be tortured, and burning, burning 

Through history with their own strange light?

--

read by Nic 2/25/26