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@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialOct 11, 2026, 7:58 AM

‘Questions’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Questions.
She should put off modesty with her shift. Who said that?
Should one, then, put off belief with one's collar? The girl enters the bed, enters the man's arms to be clasped between sheets against the un-love that is all around.
The priest lies down alone face to face with the darkness that is the nothing from which nothing comes. 'Love' he protests, 'love' in spiritual copulation
with a non-body, hearing the echoes dying away, languishing under the owl's curse.
What is a bed for? Is there no repose in the small hours? No proofing of sleep's stuff against the fretting of stars, thoughts?
Tell me, then, after the night's toil of loving or praying, is there nothing to do but to rise tired and be made away with, yawning, into the day's dream?
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialOct 7, 2026, 7:29 AM

‘Retirement’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Ymddeoliad
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Retirement.
I have crawled out at last far as I dare on to a bough of country that is suspended between sky and sea.
From what was I escaping There is a rare peace here, though the aeroplanes buzz me, reminders of that abyss,
deeper than sea or sky, civilisation could fall into. Strangers advance, inching their way out, so that the branch bends
further away from the scent of the cloud blossom. Must I console myself with reflections? There are
times even the mirror
is misted as by one breathing over my shoulder. Clinging to my position, witnessing
the seasonal migrations, I must try to content myself with the perception that love and truth have
no wings, but are resident like me here, practising
their sub-song quietly in the face of the bitterest of winters.
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialOct 4, 2026, 7:23 AM

‘Borders’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Gororau
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Borders
Somewhere beyond time's curve civilisation lifted its glass rim. There was a pretence of light
for nations to walk by through the dark wood, where history wintered. Following I came to the foretold frontier
where with a machine's instinct the guns' nostrils flared at the blooms held out to them by the flower people.
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialSep 27, 2026, 6:53 AM

‘The Window’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#yFfenestr
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

The Window.
Say he is any man anywhere set before the shop window of life, full of comestibles and jewels; to put out his hand is to come up against glass; to break it is to injure himself.
Shall he turn
poet and acquire them in the imagination, gospeller and extol himself for his abstention from them?
What if he is not called? I would put the manufacturers there. Let them see the eyes staring in, be splashed with the blood of the shop-breakers; let them live on the poet's diet, on the pocket-money of the priest.
I see the blinds
going down in Europe, over the whole world: the rich with everything to sell, the poor with nothing to buy it with.
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialSep 23, 2026, 7:15 AM

‘April Song’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

April Song.
Withdrawing from the present, wandering a past that is alive in books only. In love with women, outlasted
by their smiles; the richness of their apparel puts the poor in perspective.
The brush dipped in blood
and the knife in art
have preserved their value.
Smouldering times: sacked cities, incinerable hearts,
and the fledgling God tipped out of his high nest into the virgin's lap by the incorrigible cuckoo.
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialSep 20, 2026, 7:23 AM

‘Countering’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Countering.
Then there is the clock's commentary, the continuing prose that is the under-current of all poetry. We listen to it as, on a desert island, men do to the subdued
music of their blood in a shell.
Then take my hand that is of the bone the island is made of, and looking at me say what time it is on love's face, for we have no business here other than to disprove certainties the clock knows.
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialSep 16, 2026, 7:31 AM

‘Strands’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Strands.
It was never easy.
There was a part of us, trailing uterine
memories, would have lapsed back into Eden, the mindless place. There was a part, masochistic, terrifying itself with a possibility - infinite freedom in confrontation with infinite love; the idea
of a balance, where we should come to be weighed, lifting horrified eyes to a face that was more than human. And a part amenable to the alternatives: nature, mechanism, evolution, bearers of a torch kindled to illuminate primaeval
caves that has become electric, the probing searchlight piercing beyond the galaxies, shocking the manipulator of it with its ability to discover nothing, the ultimate hole the intrepid reason has dug for itself.
Must we
draw back? Is there a far side to an abyss, and can our wings take us there? Or is man's meaning in the keeping of himself afloat over seventy thousand fathoms, tacking against winds coming from no direction, going in no direction?
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialSep 13, 2026, 7:16 AM

‘Calling’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Calling.
The telephone is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We may call everyone up on it but God.
To do that is to declare that he is far off. Dialling zero is nothing other
than the negation of his presence.
So many times I have raised the receiver, listening to
that smooth sound that is technology's purring; and the temptation
has come to experiment with the code which would put me through to the divine
snarl at the perimeter of such tameness.
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialSep 9, 2026, 7:11 AM

‘Ritual’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Defod
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Text of poem -

Ritual.
Not international renown, but international vocabulary, the macaronics of time: poipa, desiderium, brad, la vida
breve, despair - I am the bone on which all have beaten out their message to the mind that would soar. Faithful
in translation, its ploy was to evade my resources. It saw me dance through the Middle Ages, and wrote its poetry with quilled pen. What so rich as the language to which the priests buried me? They have exchanged their vestments for white coats, working away in their bookless laboratories, ministrants in that ritual beyond words
which is the Last Sacrament of the species.
@rsthomaspoet.bsky.socialSep 6, 2026, 7:07 AM

‘AD 2000’ - #RSThomas
(Experimenting with an Amen, Macmillan 1986)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem