Blog Post

Mass for Hard Times

by R. S. Thomas

Feast of SS Alexander, John, and Paul the New, Patriarchs of Constantinople

Anno Domini 2020, August 30

Kyrie

Because we cannot be clever and honest

and are inventors of things more intricate

than the snowflake—Lord have mercy.

Because we are full of pride

in our humility, and because we believe

in our disbelief—Lord have mercy.

Because we will protect ourselves

from ourselves to the point

of destroying ourselves—Lord have mercy.

And because on the slope to perfection,

when we should be half-way up,

we are half-way down—Lord have mercy.

Gloria

From the body at its meal’s end

and its messmate whose meal is beginning,

From the early and late cloud, beautiful and deadly

as the mushroom we are forbidden to eat,

From the stars that are but as dew

and the viruses outnumbering the star clusters,

From those waiting at the foot of the helix

for the rope-trick performer to come down,

Because you are not there

When I turn, but are in the turning,

Because it is not I who look

but I who am being looked through,

Because the captive has found the liberty

that eluded him while he was free,

Because from belief that nothing is nothing

it follows that there must be something,

Because when we count we do not count

the moment between youth and age,

And because, when we are overcome,

we are overcome by nothing,

Credo

I believe in God

the Father (Is he married?)

I believe in you, the almighty,

who can do anything

you wish. (Forget that irony

of the imponderable.) Rid, therefore

(if there are not too many

of them), my intestine of the viruses against

(in accordance with? Ah, horror!)

your will are in occupation

of its defences. I call

on you, as I have done

often before (why repeat,

if he is listening?) to show

you are master of secondary

causation. (What has physics to do

with the heart’s need?) Am I too late, then, with my language?

Are symbols to be in future

the credentials of our approach?

(And how contemporary

is the Cross, that long-bow drawn

against love?) My questions

accumulate in the knowledge

it is words are the kiss of Judas

that must betray you.

parentheses are exhausted.) Almighty

pseudonym, grant me at last,

as the token of my belief,

such ability to remain

silent, as is the nearest to a reflection

of your silence to which

the human looking-glass may attain.

Sanctus

The Bunsen flame burns and is not consumed,

and the scientist has not removed his shoes

because the ground is not holy.

And because the financiers’ sun

is not Blake’s sun, there is a

word missing from the dawn chorus.

Yet without subsidies poetry

sings on, celebrating the heart

and the ‘holiness of its affections’.

And one listens and must not listen

in vain for the not too clinical

sanctus that is as the halo of its transplanting.

Benedictus

Blessed be the starved womb

and the replete womb.

Blessed the slug in the dew

and the butterfly among the ash-cans.

Blessed is the mind that brings forth good and bad

and the hand that exonerates it.

Blessed be the adder among its jewels

and the child ignorant of how love must pay.

Blessed the hare who, in a round

world, keeps the tortoise in sight.

Blessed the cross warning: No through road,

and that other Cross with its arms pointing both ways.

Blessed the woman who is amused

at Adam feeling for his lost rib.

Blessed the clock with its hands over its face

pretending it is midday, when it is midnight.

Blessed be the far side of the Cross and the back

of the mirror, that they are concealed from us.

Agnus Dei

No longer the Lamb

but the idea of it.

Can an idea bleed?

On what altar

does one sacrifice an idea?

It gave its life

for the world? No,

it is we give our life

for the idea that nourishes

itself on the dust in our veins.

God is love. Where

there is no love, no God?

There is only the gap between

word and deed we try

narrowing with an idea.

*R. S. Thomas, Collected Later Poems: 1988-2000 (Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2004), 135-139.

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