Together

All my life

I was face to face

with her, at meal-times,

by the fire, even

in the ultimate intimacies

of the bed. You could have asked,

then, for information

about her? There was a room

apart she kept herself in,

teasing me by leading me

to its glass door, only

to confront me with

my reflection. I learned from her

even so. Walking her shore

I found things cast up

from her depths that spoke

to me of another order,

worshipper as I was

of untamed nature. She fetched

her treasures from art’s

storehouse: pieces of old

lace, delicate as frost;

china from a forgotten

period; a purse more valuable

than anything it could contain.

Coming in from the fields

with my offering of flowers

I found her garden

had forestalled me in providing

civilities for my desk.

‘Tell me about life,’

I would say, ‘you who were

its messenger in the delivery

of our child.’ Her eyes had a

fine shame, remembering her privacy

being invaded from further off than

she expected. ‘Do you think

death is the end?’ frivolously

I would ask her. I recall

now the swiftness of its arrival

wrenching her lip down, and how

the upper remained firm,

reticent as the bud that is

the precursor of the flower.

Copyright Credit: R.S. Thomas, “Together” from Collected Later Poems: 1988-2000. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com.

Source: Residues (Bloodaxe Books, 2002)