Don's Blog Poetry for Supper 12-12-22

Here is a poem by RS Thomas, who was a leading Welsh poet and Anglican priest.

He is of interest to me as my mother was Welsh and was also a Thomas. 

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.

RS Thomas