Ruth Bidgood
Bereft
(in memory of R.S. Thomas)
Now is the time
of the dark house,
the empty shore.
Now the argument
is between us, unaided,
and the great Absence.
We have lost the one
who had words to catch
a wordless resonance.
We have lost his sharp cuts,
his logic’s elegance.
He is not to be found
by black hearth, bare altar.
Vainly we search for him
in the processions
of sea-creatures at their mass,
and in the sky-wide whirr
of the migrations.
Bereft, we cling
to his image of mercy
in crevices of rock,
to the hope of finding,
as he did one day, the meaning
of a sombre landscape
in a single sunlit field.
of the dark house,
the empty shore.
Now the argument
is between us, unaided,
and the great Absence.
We have lost the one
who had words to catch
a wordless resonance.
We have lost his sharp cuts,
his logic’s elegance.
He is not to be found
by black hearth, bare altar.
Vainly we search for him
in the processions
of sea-creatures at their mass,
and in the sky-wide whirr
of the migrations.
Bereft, we cling
to his image of mercy
in crevices of rock,
to the hope of finding,
as he did one day, the meaning
of a sombre landscape
in a single sunlit field.
Page(s) 42
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