R. S. Thomas Short Quotes

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It was the mind's weight
Kept me bent, as I grew tall.

R. S. Thomas
I turn now
not to the Bible
but to Wallace Stevens

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

R. S. Thomas
The silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind.

R. S. Thomas
Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.

R. S. Thomas
They chose their pastors as they chose their horses
For their hard work

R. S. Thomas
Or the dry whisper of unseen wings,
Bats not angels, in the high roof.

R. S. Thomas
The deep spaces between stars,
Fathomless as the cold shadow
His mind cast.

R. S. Thomas
You have to imagine
a waiting that is not impatient
because it is timeless.

R. S. Thomas
I am like a tree,
From my top boughs I can see
The footprints that led up to me.

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

R. S. Thomas
There was a larger pattern
we worked at: they on a big
loom, I with a small needle.

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

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

R. S. Thomas
There is blood in my veins
That has run clear of the stain
Contracted in so many loins.

R. S. Thomas
Why, then, are my hands red
with the blood of so many dead?
Is this where I was mislead?

R. S. Thomas
It is too late to start
For destinations not of the heart.
I must stay here with my hurt.

R. S. Thomas
I am a man now.
Pass your hand over my brow.
You can feel the place where the brains grow.

R. S. Thomas
Somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.

R. S. Thomas
Those who crowd
A small window dirty it
With their breathing, though sublime
And inexhaustible the view.

R. S. Thomas
To live in Wales is to be conscious at dusk of the spilled blood that went into the making of the wild sky

R. S. Thomas
Art is recuperation
from time. I lie back
convalescing upon the prospect
of a harvest already at hand.

R. S. Thomas
Hate takes a long time
To grow in, and mine
Has increased from birth;
…I find
This hate's for my own kind…

R. S. Thomas
There stood the ladies from the council houses:
Blue eyes and Birmingham yellow
Hair, and the ritual murder of vowels.

R. S. Thomas
The darkness
is the deepening shadow
of your presence; the silence a
process in the metabolism
of the being of love.

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

R. S. Thomas
Stay, then, village, for round you spins
On slow axis a world as vast
And meaningful as any poised
By great Plato's solitary mind.

R. S. Thomas
God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find.

R. S. Thomas
Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being … ultimate reality is what we call God.

R. S. Thomas
We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.

R. S. Thomas