If I may continue the religious theme for one more week (well, it is Christmas) here is another of R.S.Thomas’s spare meditations. Note that as usual with Thomas there is no one else about in the church, and one begins to suspect that this is how he liked it. Which may be fair enough. Of course, Christianity has been from the start a very sociable sort of religion, featuring big outdoor parties for up to five thousand people (free fish sandwiches for all, bring a basket for leftovers) and weddings with copious amounts of wine on tap, so to speak. But just as I have always felt that the writing of true poetry demands a trancelike solitude that rules out anything communal, so maybe for the truly devout the doorway to their god is also a narrow one that no two can pass abreast.

The form of Thomas’s poems fascinates me.

Generally
I am not of that school who believe
that putting in a line break every few words
makes something into
a poem.

So why do I feel that these unrhymed, rather irregular lines, varying from seven to nine syllables, are very much a poem? Mainly, I suppose, because of their content and imagery, but also because of some invisible rhythmic scaffolding that gives structure no less, and perhaps more subtly, than a more regular metrical pattern. It’s intriguing.

In a Country Church

To one kneeling down no word came,
Only the wind’s song, saddening the lips
Of the grave saints, rigid in glass;
Or the dry whisper of unseen wings,
Bats not angels, in the high roof.
Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long,
And saw love in a dark crown
Of thorns blazing, and a winter tree
Golden with fruit of a man’s body.

R.S.Thomas