Lmst

#cerdd

Gwelaf gwyntgardd a
symudiadau sydyn
planhigion gwlyb

#haiku #Cymraeg #cerdd

‘Two’ - #RSThomas (The Way of It, Ceolfrith Press) #Dau #Two #Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd #Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Two.
So you have to think of the bone hearth where love was kindled, of the size
of the shadows so small a flame threw on the world's walls, with the heavens
over them, lighting their vaster fires to no end. He took her hand sometimes and felt the will to be of the poetry he could not write. She measured him with her moist eye for the coat always too big. And time, the faceless collector of taxes, beat on their thin door, and they opened to him, looking beyond him, beyond the sediment of his myriad demands to the bright place, where their undaunted spirits were already walking.

‘Festival’ - #RSThomas (Residues, @BloodaxeBooks) #Gŵyl #Festival #Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd #Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Festival.
This Christmas before an altar of gold the holly will remind us how love bleeds,
the mistletoe remind how pale and puny the knuckles of the few fingers clenched upon faith.

‘Christmas’ - #RSThomas (Not That He Brought Flowers - Rupert Hart-Davis) #Nadolig #Christmas #Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd #Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Christmas.
There is a morning;
Time brings it nearer,
Brittle with frost
And starlight. The owls sing In the parishes. The people rise And walk to the churches' Stone lanterns, there to kneel And eat the new bread Of love, washing it down With the sharp taste Of blood they will shed.
- RS Thomas

‘Blind Noel’ - #RSThomas (No Truce with the Furies, @BloodaxeBooks) #Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd #Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

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.

‘Luminary’ - #RSThomas (Uncollected Poems, @BloodaxeBooks) #Goleuaethwr #Luminary #Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd #Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
Luminary.
My luminary,
my morning and evening star. My light at noon when there is no sun and the sky lowers. My balance of joy in a world that has gone off joy's standard. Yours the face that young I recognised as though I had known you of old. Come, my eyes said, out into the morning of a world whose dew waits for your footprint.
Before a green altar with the thrush for priest I took those gossamer vows that neither the Church could stale nor the Machine tarnish, that with the years have grown hard as flint, lighter than platinum on our ringless fingers.

‘The View from the Window’ - #RSThomas (Poetry for Supper, Rupert Hart-Davis) #Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd #Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

The View from the Window.
Like a painting it is set before one, But less brittle, ageless; these colours Are renewed daily with variations Of light and distance that no painter Achieves or suggests. Then there is movement, Change, as slowly the cloud bruises Are healed by sunlight, or snow caps A black mood; but gold at evening To cheer the heart. All through history
The great brush has not rested, Nor the paint dried; yet what eye, Looking coolly, or, as we now, Through the tears' lenses, ever saw This work and it was not finished?

Although this account is paused on here, it’s now active in a different place where the sky is always blue. Perhaps take a look at https://bsky.app/profile/rsthomaspoet.bsky.social ? 😊
#RSThomas
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Colour photo of elderly balding man, seated in front of full bookshelves, laughing happily

If you’re thinking of a different place, perhaps take a look at @rsthomaspoet.bsky.social ? 😊
#RSThomas
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Colour photo of RS Thomas: an elderly, balding man laughing happily. He’s seated in front of shelves full of books, and wearing his trademark red tie.

‘Farming Peter’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
FARMING PETER.
and there the scarecrow walked over the surface of the brown breakers tattered like Christ himself and the man went at his call with the fathoms under him and because of his faith in the creation of his own hands he was buoyed up floundering but never sinking scalded by the urine of the skies deaf to the voices calling from the high road telling him his Saviour's face was of straw.

‘Self-portrait’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
#Hunanbortread #SelfPortrait
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
SELF-PORTRAIT.
That resigned look! Here I am, it says; fifty-nine, balding, shirking the challenge of the young girls. Time running out now, and the soul unfinished. And the heart knows this is not the portrait it posed for. Keep the lips firm; too many disappointments have turned the mouth down at the corners. There is no surgery can mend those lines; cruelly the light fingers them and the mind winces. All that skill, life, on the carving of the curved nostril and to no end but disgust. The hurrying eyes pause, waiting for an outdistanced gladness to overtake them.

‘The Reception’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
THE RECEPTION.
The clouds were brown like the landscape. Sullen men worked there, fingering their scars. The brown got into their minds so that they could not see God. It concerned him at times. He arrayed himself in bright green, but the winds of that place burned him; he was a ghost unnoticed, a body nailed to a dead tree. When he came down no one rejoiced; he was as dry leaves blowing, flimsy integument of the hard soil. He withdrew to consider, rejuvenating himself at the mind's sources. White, he thought; I will visit this people as a white bird, my feathers their winter. They perceived him then; fell upon him in silence, seeking for the brown soil he deprived them of, trampling him into it.

‘Hallowe’en’ - #RSThomas
(No Truce with the Furies, @BloodaxeBooks)
#NosCalanGaeaf #Halloween
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
Hallowe'en.
Outside a surfeit of planes. Inside the hunger of the departed to come back. 'Ah, erstwhile humans, would you make your mistakes over again? In life, as in love, the second time round is no better.' I confront their expressions in the embers, on grey walls: faces among the stones watching me to see if this night of all nights I will make sacrifice to the spirits of hearth and of roof-tree, pouring a libation. 'Stay where you are,' I implore. 'This is no world for escaped beings to make their way back into. The well that you took your pails to is polluted. At the centre of the mind's labyrinth the machine howls for the sacrifice of the affections; vocabulary has on a soft collar but the tamed words are not to be trusted. As long as the flames hum, making their honey, better to look in upon truth's comb than to take off as we do on fixed wings for depollinated horizons.'

‘Welsh Summer’ - #RSThomas
(Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
WELSH SUMMER.
They blow on their horns; the valleys are full of echoes; voices from vanished kingdoms answer them from their recesses in time. Here there is no sleep for the dead; they are resurrected to mourn. Everywhere is the sad chorus of an old people, waking to weep. It is the machine wins; the land suffers the formication of its presence. Places that would have preferred peace have had their bowels opened; our children paddle thoughtlessly there in the mess.

‘He is sometimes contrary’ #RSThomas
(What is a Welshman? - Christopher Davies Publishers, Llandybie)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
He is sometimes contrary.
No poem to be dialled? No, 1 wouldn't help. I was not available to you for two new pence .... If I told you that Catraeth has always to be re-fought; that the birds of Rhiannon will never be heard in your suburban garden; that office hours are the best time to pluck trout from the silver branches of the streams of Mawddwy. If I brought thirst upon you that the dusty beer of your addiction could not allay ... How would that have comforted you?

‘On a diet of warmed-up music’ - #RSThomas
(What is a Welshman? - Christopher Davies Publishers, Llandybie)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
On a diet of warmed-up music.
His favourite instrument the harmonium-such breathless music! When asthma afflicts the arts, what hope for the prosaic millions, whose search is for strings to pull? He once had the harp, the goddess with gold ribs; but long ago now her feathers were plucked. By an old hearth's ashes she sits and shivers.

‘Harvest End’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

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.

‘He has the vote’ - #RSThomas
(What is a Welshman? - Christopher Davies Publishers, Llandybie)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
He has the vote.
and a stupendous future awaits this little— VOTE TORY-this little nation of . ... What does crachach mean? (Every drop of water is worth its weight in tears, but they are running out now like the variations on the cynghanedd.) VOTE LABOUR and protect your class. There is an aristocracy of the pit, too. VOTE LIBERAL and allow England to enjoy your prospects. VOTE PLAID, mun and be damned for your own sake.

‘He lives here’ - #RSThomas
(What is a Welshman? - Christopher Davies Publishers, Llandybie)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
He lives here
and he showed it to me and I recognised it by its smell the smell of chapels gone sour and I said God deliver me from the womb that is stubborn to bear and I lay on the bleak hills black with the dust of coal not yet mined and they stood round with white faces and the old familiar slang of the valleys was on the lips of the wind welcome boi bach fallen among the slag and clinkers of time with a language filched from the dictionary of the tribes we await your sermon and a pulpit grew up under my feet and I climbed into it and it was the cage of the mine-shaft down down down to preach to the lost souls of the coal-face reminding how green is the childhood of a glib people taunting them with the abandonment of the national for the class struggle

‘Drive’ - #RSThomas
(Young and Old, Chatto & Windus)
#Gyrru #Drive
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -
DRIVE.
Came by Rhondda, many stops, Many escapes; traffic lights Always against me; the speed-cops Following close, so that the girls At the shop corners went unnoticed. At Penderyn two 'buses Across the road; swerved round them With cool nerve- test my breath For alcohol; it stays clear, The colour. Binding myself To a strict schedule, I came down To Builth town from high Eppynt Punctually, and crossed the Wye In bright dust, braking rarely For tractors, for horses, for slow cows And cowmen. Filled the tank At Rhaeadr and drank in The atmosphere, and so off Once more, opening the throttle For the long climb over Pumlumon. Home on the dot.

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