"The Coming" by R. S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), a poet and priest in the Church of Wales, with Mildred Eldridge, his wife, in 1940.

Each week, I try to include a paragraph or several on the inside of the service leaflet. Sometimes it’s an excerpt from a writing by a theologian, ancient or modern, on one of the texts appointed for the day; other times it might be a snippet from a novel or other more contemporary work. Today, it happened to be this poem by R. S. Thomas, which I very much appreciated as a first step into this holiest of weeks.

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.