In Memoariam R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)
Yes, I remember that Larkin in a letter
referred to you as “Arse Thomas”.
But when the already prepared eulogies
rained in columns under the final photo
you looked more than just older than your age:
tired, suspicious, miserable as usual perhaps,
unflinchingly observant, though,
despite eyes watery from that wind
which was always dishevelling your hair.
You never believed, I’ll bet,
in the purgatory in which
you now find yourself,
leaving your Gwynedd gloom behind you
like wool on briars and brambles,
being slowly combed free of doubt.
No hurry now, no waves breaking
on Cambrian promontories;
just light, inexorably increasing
in brilliance, like those sunbursts
through stormclouds out over Ireland
that you loved so much, but never blinding,
illuminating rather, gently nagging even,
like an old collie’s muzzle
against your arthritic knee,
persistent because perpetual.
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- Paper, The
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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- Yellow Crane, The