R. S. Thomas Quotes

I can’t speak my own
language - Iesu,
All those good words;
And I outside them.

What was the shell doing, on the shore? An ear endlessly drinking? What? Sound? Silence? Which came first? Listen.

Why are my hands this way That they will not do as i say? Does no God hear when I pray?

Yet men sought us despite this. My high cheek-bones, my length of skull Drew them as to a rare portrait By a dead master. I saw them stare From their long cars, as I passed knee-deep In ewes and wethers. I saw them stand By the thorn hedges, watching me string The far flocks on a shrill whistle. And always there was their eyes; strong Pressure on me: You are Welsh, they said; Speak to us so; keep your fields free Of the smell of petrol, the loud roar Of hot tractors; we must have peace And quietness.

In the silence that is his chosen medium of communication and telling others about it in words. Is there no way not to be the sport of reason?

I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow.

I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox.

It was not I who lived, but life rather that lived me.

Even God had a Welsh name: He spoke to him in the old language; He was to have a peculiar care For the Welsh people. History showed us He was too big to be nailed to the wall Of a stone chapel, yet still we crammed him Between the boards of a black book.

I have been all men known to history, Wondering at the world and at time passing; I have seen evil, and the light blessing Innocent love under a spring sky.

Let despair be known as my ebb-tide; but let prayer have its springs, too, brimming, disarming him; discovering somewhere among his fissures deposits of mercy where trust may take root and grow.

You cannot find the centre Where we dance, where we play, Where life is still asleep Under the closed flower, Under the smooth shell Of eggs in the cupped nest That mock the faded blue Of your remoter heaven.

Seated at table -
no need for the fracture
of the room's silence; noiselessly
they conversed.

All art is anonymous.

I have been Merlin wandering in the woods Of a far country, where the winds waken Unnatural voices, my mind broken By a sudden acquaintance with man’s rage.