Evans

By R. S. Thomas

Evans? Yes, many a time

I came down his bare flight

Of stairs into the gaunt kitchen

With its wood fire, where crickets sang

Accompaniment to the black kettle’s

Whine, and so into the cold

Dark to smother in the thick tide

Of night that drifted about the walls

Of his stark farm on the hill ridge.

It was not the dark filling my eyes

And mouth apalled me; not even the drip

Of rain like blood from the one tree

Weather-tortured. It was the dark

Silting the veins of that sick man

I left stranded upon the vast

And lonely shore of his bleak bed.

Copyright Credit: R. S. Thomas, “Evans” from The Poems of R. S. Thomas. Copyright © 2001 by Kunjana Jaikin. Reprinted by permission of Kunjana Jaikin.

Source: The Poems of R. S. Thomas (1985)