'A Bird's Prayer'
A bird's prayer is its song,
addressed to nobody
but the unknown listener
to its feathered vernacular.
Man's prayer is a trickle
of language gathering to a reservoir
to be drawn on by the thirsting
mind in its need for meaning.1
Poets' Meeting. George Herbert, R. S. Thomas and the Argument with God, is an intriguingly rich acknowledgement of Thomas's critical appreciation of Herbert's poetry. One of Herbert's most effective sonnets is 'Prayer II', a sustained catena of descriptive clauses that nowhere uses the verb 'to be', and therefore a poem which offers a long menu of options as to what prayer may be at any given time, in the mind and heart of any given human being. The poem ends with a phrase of almost playful profundity: "something understood."
That phrase stirs in the memory when I read the last words of this short poem by Thomas: "the thirsting / mind in its need for meaning." When a poet like Thomas reads and rereads the work of another poet, (and Thomas edited a Choice of Herbert's verse for Faber), it's highly likely that much of the language and content is retained, consciously or unconsciously, and later reminted in different form and words.
To Herbert's 14 lines of non-argument and non-definitions of what prayer is, Thomas does provide a definition of what prayer is. And it reads like a further outworking of that spiritually reticent and modest claim that prayer is, at least, or at most, 'something understood'. Not everything. Nothing final. But something. On full show throughout the prayer, but especially its closing clause, Herbert's genius in reining in the spiritual arrogance that thinks communion with God can be exhaustively, or even sufficiently reduced to the controlling definitions of human language. Such linguistic precision and theological control, Thomas scorned. But the urge to understand, the desire to know, the irresistible frustration of the mystery, that inner drive to understanding, that he recognised within himself.
The last stanza is one unpunctuated sentence defining what prayer is, but without clarifying beyond the thirsting mind with its confessed need for meaning. In contrast the first stanza pauses at the first line, the comma alerting the reader to the simplicity of what is said, and at first a feeling that enough is said.
"A bird's prayer is its song." I could almost live with that as a lovely fusion of ornithology and creation spirituality!
But the stanza continues, raising a question that has long exercised philosophical theologians, 'To whom is prayer addressed? The answer Thomas provides has its own ambiguities, "the unknown listener.' The bird sings regardless of being heard; the beauty and lyrical sound have their own meaning. But that won't do. The poet is sure enough that the prayer is addressed, but only to the most limited of audiences, 'the unknown listener', and one who understands the 'feathered vernacular', the common speech of the bird. Who is the unknown listener? Does it matter if they are known, recognised, even there? Who better understands the 'feathered vernacular' than the unknown listener, the originating impulse of the singer of the song?
Compared to the song of the bird, human prayer is not music but speech, not song but language. The 'trickle of language', is likened to the stream that replenishes the reservoir. But a reservoir of what? Not the mind, the thirsting mind is what draws from the reservoir. Each of us create, find and borrow the words we use as we develop our own style of speech, and prayer. Liturgical repetition is a regular trickle of language which forms us in a tradition, and slowly leaves its deposits that nurture the spiritual life. What we read and sing, countless conversations which are the fabric of friendships and relation building, the words of intimacy with those closest to us, our inner responses to goodness, beauty and truth, the whole inner life becomes the reservoir of what and who we are becoming.
It is from this continual trickle of the gathered experience of relationships, language, people, place, memory and self-awareness, that the inner reservoir of identity and unique individuality of who we are is continually being formed, "to be drawn on by the thirsting / mind in its need for meaning."
"Drawn on" can, of course, mean either drawn as in attracted and pulled towards, or drawn as in water from a well or reservoir. Here, however, the poet intends the verb 'draw' to relate particularly to the image of the reservoir as resource to be drawn on - to construct meaning, to formulate thought, and only then to seek the translation of thought and meaning back into the trickle of language.
Such a short poem, but the singing bird unselfconsciously making music for whoever happens to hear, and the thirsting mind's restless search for meaning, contrasts with some poignancy with the deeply human longing to know, to understand, to discover who it is that may, or may not, hear the song. There is, I think a wistfulness in the contrast, the poet producing an elegant comparison of bird and man, song and language, the unknown listener and the human search for meaning, and the longing for some tangible sign that what the mind draws on and ponders and gives language to, may eventually be spoken, and then heard by the unknown listener.
Here as in so many poems, spiritual autobiography is woven through the poem. What we are reading and therefore hearing, is the voice of experience, a theology of longing. Thomas sees and hears a bird sing its prayer for the sake of singing to its unknown listener, while for him prayer is much more complicated. As if he is looking at his own reflection, gazing into his own reservoir of language, his prayer a search for meaning, purpose, and the unknown listener who will hear his song, and shape from the reservoir of his language, 'something understood.' 2
- R. S. Thomas. Uncollected Poems. (Eds.) Tony Brown and Jason Walford Davies, Bloodaxe, 2013, page 175.
- All the photos on this post are my own, and my personal intellectual property. Please ask permission to reproduce them on another platform. Thank you.
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