Originally Posted by
Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
A Marriage
- Poem by Ronald Stuart Thomas
We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love's moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
`Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance, And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.
Ronald Stuart Thomas
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A Blackbird Singing
- Poem by Ronald Stuart Thomas
It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes'
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.
You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.
A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history's overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.
Ronald Stuart Thomas
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BIOGRAPHY
Ronald Stuart Thomas poet
Ronald Stuart Thomas was born in Cardiff in 1913, the son of a sea captain. He was educated at University College of North Wales and later undertook theological training at St Michael's College in Cardiff. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1936.
During his time as a rector he began to write poetry and verse. His writing career continued for fifty years during which time he produced twenty volumes of poetry and was nominated for a Nobel prize and awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Whilst religion, understandably, was one of the major themes of his work, he also wrote about nature and about Welsh history. Thomas was fervent and often outspoken Welsh patriot and even wrote his autobiography Nab (Nobody - 1985) in Welsh.
Thomas enjoyed working in the countryside and spent his whole time as a clergyman working in rural parishes. He retired in 1978. His first wife Elsi, by whom he had a son, died in 1991 after 51 years of marriage. He later married his second wife, Betty, who was with him until his death. He died at the age of 87 n 25th September 2000.
Whilst still remembered for his Welsh republican views, it is for his religious poetry that he is still held in high regard. Of his work, he said:
"My chief aim is to make a poem . You make it for yourself firstly, and then if other people want to join in... then there we are." His Collected Poems was published in 1993 and is still available today.
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Ronald Stuart Thomas Poems
The Dance
She is young. Have I the right Even to name her? Child, It is not love I offer
A Day In Autumn
It will not always be like this, The air windless, a few last Leaves adding their decoration To the trees’ shoulders, braiding the cuffs
Children's Song
We live in our own world, A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees,
Ninetieth Birthday
You go up the long track That will take a car, but is best walked On slow foot, noting the lichen That writes history on the page
A Blackbird Singing
It seems wrong that out of this bird, Black, bold, a suggestion of dark Places about it, there yet should come Such rich music, as though the notes'
A Marriage
We met under a shower of bird-notes.
A Welsh Testament
All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter? I spoke a tongue that was passed on To me in the place I happened to be, A place huddled between grey walls
A Peasant
Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed, Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills, Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud. Docking mangels, chipping the green skin
Welsh Landscape
To live in Wales is to be conscious At dusk of the spilled blood That went into the making of the wild sky, Dyeing the immaculate rivers
The Cat And The Sea
It is a matter of a black cat On a bare cliff top in March Whose eyes anticipate The gorse petals;
Here
I am a man now. Pass your hand over my brow. You can feel the place where the brains grow.
Pisces
Who said to the trout, You shall die on Good Friday To be food for a man And his pretty lady?
Death Of A Poet
Laid now on his smooth bed For the last time, watching dully Through heavy eyelids the day's colour Widow the sky, what can he say
Welsh History
We were a people taut for war; the hills Were no harder, the thin grass Clothed them more warmly than the coarse Shirts our small bones.
All poems of Ronald Stuart Thomas »
~ "It is a matter of a black cat On a bare cliff top in March Whose eyes anticipate The gorse petals;
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