R S Thomas - Poems

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.

We fought, and were always in retreat,
Like snow thawing upon the slopes
Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger
Never found our ultimate stand
In the thick woods, declaring verse
To the sharp prompting  of the harp.

Our king died. or they were slain
By the old treachery at the ford.
Our bards perished, driven from the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble.

We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past.
The great were ashamed of our loose rags
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree
Of blood and birth, our lean bellies
And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life.

We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters,
In lands to which we had no claim.
With men for whom we felt no hatred.

We were a people, and are so yet.
When we have finished quarelling for crumbs
Under the table, or gnawing the bones
Of a dead culture, we will arise,
Armed, but not in the old way.




Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr  says people do not understand why R S Thomas was so hard on his fellow countrymen - we do -  we see them repeating the mistakes of the past and presenting them as victories. 

Defeat has a pattern - it also has it authors and RS Thomas despised the authors of those defeats with a venom shared by us.