The Untamed

By R. S. Thomas 1913–2000

My garden is the wild

Sea of the grass. Her garden

Shelters between walls.

The tide could break in;

I should be sorry for this.

There is peace there of a kind,

Though not the deep peace

Of wild places. Her care

For green life has enabled

The weak things to grow.

Despite my first love,

I take sometimes her hand,

Following straight paths

Between flowers, the nostril

Clogged with their thick scent.

The old softness of lawns

Persuading the slow foot

Leads to defection; the silence

Holds with its gloved hand

The wild hawk of the mind.

But not for long, windows,

Opening in the trees

Call the mind back

To its true eyrie; I stoop

Here only in play.

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

Biography

Recognized as one of the leading poets of modern Wales, R. S. Thomas writes about the people of his country in a style that some critics have compared to that nation's harsh and rugged terrain. Using few of the common poetic devices, Thomas's work exhibits what Alan Brownjohn of the New Statesman calls a "cold, telling purity of language." James F. Knapp of Twentieth Century Literature explains that "the poetic world which . . .

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