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Martians and gorgons<br />

487<br />

1966. Set in his home county of Northumberland, it is an account of the<br />

county and the century, bringing Pound’s influence up to our own day.<br />

Furthest, fairest things, stars, free of our humbug,<br />

each his own, the longer known the more alone,<br />

wrapt in emphatic fire roaring out to a black flue.<br />

Each spark trills on a tone beyond chronological compass,<br />

yet in a sextant’s bubble present and firm<br />

places a surveyor’s stone or steadies a tiller.<br />

Then is Now. The star you steer by is gone,<br />

its tremulous thread spun in the hurricane<br />

spider floss on my cheek; light from the zenith<br />

spun when the slowworm lay in her lap<br />

fifty years ago.<br />

R.S. Thomas is the most significant Welsh poet since Dylan Thomas.<br />

He has been described as ‘our best living religious poet’, and there is<br />

some truth in this, although many poets discuss religion in their works.<br />

Thomas is, in fact, a clergyman and his work in a rural parish imbues<br />

his poetry with a harsh, bleak, pastoral quality, reflecting the landscape<br />

and the history of Wales. ‘There is no present in Wales/ And no future;/<br />

There is only the past’, he affirms, contradicting T.S. Eliot. His poetry<br />

has a roughness to it, a challenge to ‘the English/ Scavenging among<br />

the remains/ of our culture’. Pietà (1966) and Selected Poems 1946–68<br />

(published in 1973) are representative of his best work.<br />

What’s living but courage?<br />

Paunch full of hot porridge,<br />

Nerves strengthened with tea,<br />

Peat-black, dawn found me<br />

Mowing where the grass grew,<br />

Bearded with golden dew.<br />

Rhythm of the long scythe<br />

Kept this tall frame lithe.<br />

(Lore)

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