TO end our Easter sequence here is a reflection by the great modern Welsh cleric-poet R S Thomas.
Wrestling with belief and doubt, he finds an ultimate affirmation in the struggle itself. The piece is included in R S Thomas: Uncollected Poems, edited by Tony Brown and Jason Walford Davies (Bloodaxe Books, 2013, £9.95).
EASTER: I APPROACH
Easter. I approach
the years' empty tomb.
What has time done with
itself? Is the news worth
the communicating? The word's
loincloth can remember
little. A thin, cold wind
blows from the abysm
that I gawp into. But supposing
there were bones; the darkness
illuminated like a museum?
In glass cases I have
peered at the brittle bundles,
exonerating my conscience
with mortality's tears.
But here, true to my name,
I have nothing to hold on
to, an absence so much richer
than a presence, offering
instead of the skull's
leer an impalpable possibility
for faith's fingertips to explore.
2009
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