Beyond the rant.

A really special friend recommended R.S Thomas' poetry to me. I opened the anthology and was hooked. Reading poetry for me is a bit like reading the Bible (only a personal opinion). Sometimes I don't really understand quite what's being said but amidst the words I find profound and often beautiful truths.

Now I know that not everyone likes poetry. People feel that it takes 15 lines to say what could be voiced in one. But here are two poems by Thomas which help me make sense of my topsy-turvy, fluctuating faith.

The Coming

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.

On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

The Kingdom

It's a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and minds fractured
By life. It's a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.