--- In [email protected], "PaliGap" <compost1uk@...> wrote:
>
>
> Hey Raunchy - as our resident poet, I came across
> this the other day. Do you like it? (It comforts me as I
> wait in fear for some LARGE zebra to get all medieval on
> my arse as he did with Ravi (peace be upon his beloved)):
>
> The Bright Field
>
> I have seen the sun break through
> to illuminate a small field
> for a while, and gone my way
> and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
> of great price, the one field that had
> treasure in it. I realize now
> that I must give all that I have
> to possess it. Life is not hurrying
>
> on to a receding future, nor hankering after
> an imagined past. It is the turning
> aside like Moses to the miracle
> of the lit bush, to a brightness
> that seemed as transitory as your youth
> once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
>
> ~ R. S. Thomas ~
>
It's a long time since I came across anything by R. S. Thomas, a Welsh poet, I
believe. Thanks for posting it. I find it a little too watered-down Wordsworth
but the sentiment expressed may be sincere. Some Christian and Old Testament
allusions, which are absent from the following poem by Thomas, which I have
always been fond of, and find more life-affirming in a sensual, pagan way than
the poem above. More D. H. Lawrence than Wordsworth, and with greater emotional
force, I think. He really felt this one, whereas "The Bright Field" has just a
whiff of a worthy idea tidily worked out -- an almost theological position
("the eternity that awaits you") rather than an inspired vision.
This poem is simply called "Song."
We, who are men, how shall we know
Earth's ecstasy, who feels the plough
Probing her womb,
And after, the sweet gestation
And the year's care for her condition?
We, who have forgotten, so long ago
It happened, our own orgasm,
When the wind mixed with our limbs
And the sun had suck at our bosom;
We, who have affected the livery
Of the times' prudery,
How shall we quicken again
To the lust and thrust of the sun
And the seedling rain?
