R.S.Thomas

R.S.Thomas
r.s.thomas

Thursday, August 29, 2002

(Nice) Reta Carden from Mayville NY has sent the copy of H'm.
She is nice because she was so patient while UK banks worked out how to send a few dollars to NY. And even more patient while PayPal tried to work out whether it could possibly allow you to open PayPal from a Thai ISP!!
Of course, as is the way with booksellers , it turns out not to be the first edition but the US first edition. However since I don't think anyone ever thought there was such a thing it is not without interest. It is the UK sheets with a MacMillan/St Martin's Press title page. It has a Library of Congress Number 72-79154 and a dustjacket with a $4.95 price tag and St.Martin's on the spine. The boards are brown with H'M and ST.MARTIN'S in caps! Was the UK edition not in gray boards? John Harris (A Bibliographical Guide to Twenty-Four Modern Anglo-Welsh Writers UWP 1994) does not say; and my copy is not here. But then he does not mention this ed. There was a David Godine edition of Laboratories of the Spirit. I now wonder if there was a US edition of Frequencies?
I also wonder if MacMillan did not do something peculiar like split the edition between US and UK sheets. It was the first MacMillan book-thanks to Kevin Crossley Holland. I have not seen a secondhand copy in more than 10 years. Even the paperback is uncommon. The hardback is by far the scarcest of the 'normal' editions post SATYT 1955. Why? Frequencies and LOS are common books. While on this--the other book I have never seen is the Japanese edition of SATYT. RS never had a copy.

From H'm -Not printed in Collected Poems -is this:

PARRY

You say the word
'God'. I cancel
It with a smile.
You make a smile proof
That God is. I try
A new gambit. Look,
I say, the wide air-
Empty. You listen
To it as one hearing
The God breathe.
Shout, then,
I cry: waken
The unseen sleeper; let
Him come forth, history
Yearns for him.
You smile
Now in your turn,
Putting a finger
To my lips, not cancelling
My cry, pardoning it
Under the green tree
Where history nailed him.

posted by thomas | 9:52 PM

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

HEINZ MEMORIAL BIRTHDAY

Ap Huw's Testament

There are four verses to put down
For the four people in my life,
Father, mother, wife

And the one child. Let me begin
With her of the immaculate brow
My wife; she loves me. I know how.

My mother gave me the breast's milk
Generously, but grew mean after,
Envying me my detached laughter.

My father was a passionate man,
Wrecked after leaving the sea
In her love's shallows. He grieves in me.

What shall I say of my boy,
Tall, fair? He is young yet;
Keep his feet free of the world's net.

The Son

It was your mother wanted you:
you were already half-formed
when I entered. But can I deny
the hunger, the loneliness bringing me in
from myself? And when you appeared
before me, there was no repentance
for what I had done, as there was shame
in the doing it; compassion only
for that which was too small to be called
human. The unfolding of your hands
was plant-like, your ear was the shell
I thundered in; your cries. when they came,
were those of a blind creature
trodden upon: pain not yet become grief.

Birthday

Come to me a moment, stand,
Ageing yet lovely still,
At my side, let me tell you that,
With the clouds massing for attack
And the wind worrying the leaves
From the branches and the blood seeping
Thin and slow through the ventricles
Of the heart, I regret less,
Looking back on the poem's
Weakness, the failure of the mind
To be clever than of the heart
To deserve you as you showed how.

posted by thomas | 6:55 PM

Luminary

My luminary.
my morning and evening
star. My light at noon
when there is no sun
and the sky lowers. My balance
of joy in a world
that has gone off joy's
standard. Yours the face
that young I recognised
as though I had known you
of old. Come, my eyes
said, out into the morning
of a world whose dew
waits for your footprint.
Before a green altar
with the thrush for priest
I took those gossamer
vows that neither the Church
could stale nor the Machine
tarnish, that with the years
have grown hard as flint,
lighter than platinum
on our ringless fingers.

posted by thomas | 6:39 PM

Sunday, August 25, 2002

Ancestors/genealogy now links. Inaccurate typing on my part, of course. But you can still go to antony maitland's site and search it for R.S.Thomas.

posted by thomas | 10:07 AM