Monday, November 23, 2009

RS Thomas

I was meandering online through some poems by RS Thomas - looking for one about a daffodil (at least, the poem reminds me of a daffodil).

And though I didn't find the daffodilly poem, I did find this:

A Blackbird Singing
by R. S. Thomas

It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes'
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.

You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.

A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history's overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.

3 comments:

TomRourke said...

So on this wet, wintry morning, another R.S. Thomas poem struck a cord when musing on poetry and poets (or at least the people I know who just might have a bit of poetry in them...

Poetry for Supper

'Listen, now, 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.'

'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's 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.'
'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'

'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.

TomRourke said...

....and I still can't type or spell.....

Orlaith said...

Oh that's wonderful - thanks Tom!

I wonder which Chaucer quote he's drawing on... the only one I can think of is 'the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne'.

Anyhoo, love it!