This poem, ‘The Bright Field’, was read at a recent ECI committee meeting. R S Thomas served in the Church of St Hywyn in Aberdaron on the western tip of the Llŷn Peninsula in the Welsh county of Gwynedd.
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.