Over the next week in Lent I'll post a poem a day with minimal comment. This is amongst the most important poems by R S Thomas, as far as my own appreciation and judgement goes. I used this at a Maundy Thursday service 30 years ago and still remember the response of a congregation most of whom were hearing it for the first time.
A friend called Alistair, presented me with an inscribed copy. He had taught himself calligraphy while held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war in the same barrack as Laurens Van der Post. That, along with Herbert's Poem Prayer (II), remains a treasured possession.
The Musician
A memory of Kreisler once:
At some recital in this same city,
The seats all taken, I found myself pushed
On to the stage with a few others,
So near that I could see the toil
Of his face muscles, a pulse like a moth
Fluttering under the fine skin,
And the indelible veins of his smooth brow.I could see, too, the twitching of the fingers,
Caught temporarily in art’s neurosis,
As we sat there or warmly applauded
This player who so beautifully suffered
For each of us upon his instrument.So it must have been on Calvary
In the fiercer light of the thorns’ halo:
The men standing by and that one figure,
The hands bleeding, the mind bruised but calm,
Making such music as lives still.
And no one daring to interrupt
Because it was himself that he played
And closer than all of them the God listened.R S Thomas
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