R S Thomas and unintended theological apologetics

I have waited for him
               under the tree of science,
and he has not come;
              and no voice has said:
Behold a scientist in whom
              there is no guile.

I have put my hand in my pocket
              for a penny for the engaging
of the machinery of things and
              it was a bent
penny, fit for nothing but for placing
              on the cobbled eyeballs
of the dead.
                  And where do I go
              from here? I have looked in
through the windows of their glass
              laboratories and seen them plotting
the future, and have put a cross
              there at the bottom
of the working out of their problems to
              prove to them that they were wrong.
R S Thomas, The Echoes Return Slow, (London: MacMillan, 1988), 89



Very few poets manage to write theological apologetics. R. S. Thomas of course never set out to do that, his aesthetic and spiritual integrity make it literally unthinkable. Nevertheless in this poem there is a knowing skepticism about scientific certitude and the imperialistic tendencies rational modernity.

And as often with Thomas, the use of a trojan term, an oblique reference to a Christian symbol, almost camouflaged by ambiguity and easily missed by the secular mindset, by which he pushes the reader towards the place of revelation:

                "...and have put a cross

                     there at the bottom

of the working out of their problems to

prove to them that they were wrong."