'Watching you is like watching the sea.'
Poem: Rare Bird, a glosa for RS Thomas
Poem by Philip Gross
Grey waters, vast
as an area of prayer
that one enters. Daily
over a period of years
I have let the eye rest on them.
Was I waiting for something?
Nothing
but that continuous waving
that is without meaning
occurred.
Ah, but a rare bird is
rare. It is when one is not looking,
at times one is not there
that it comes.
(from ‘Sea-watching’, RS Thomas)
Watching you is like watching the sea,
the waves, your words, washing over the same
edge of things, land’s end, and of all we can say
just to say it again. Rise, fall… We are the sum
that will not come out right. Catch the sigh
of waves recoiling, threads of foam that pour
back through themselves, unpicking the seam
of meaning, cracks in the conspiracy
of silence, rips in the mist through which appear
grey waters, vast as an area of prayer
you cross, recross. Again, the endless slight
reformulations of the light, the Name
that can’t be spoken, darkening to slate
under cloud – rise, fall, the metronome
of days. We’ve sat too long. It’s late,
my… I can’t say friend. You shied from easy airs
and graces, as if bitter was a synonym
for true. Salt shrivels to preserve. Sleet
pebbledashes sea-glass. An opacity like yours
one enters daily, over a period of years,
your unappeasable, strangely plentiful
presence. No wonder you courted an absence like God.
Beckett would understand, with his ‘fail, fail
better’: more words for lessness, words, good
after bad, poured into the emptiness. Full
rhyme was glib. No, trust in the wince, the bite
of the slant – hurt/heart – the way waves goad
the shore, to leave us tide-wrack. Rise and fall.
Like gulls, we beachcomb at the ebb. What
was I waiting for? Something? Nothing? But
we can’t stop listening to ‘the long withdrawing roar’
or gazing till our eyes maze. Words
break surface as a diving bird might rear
up, beat the water, thrash towards
its lift-off – as a seal might breach for air
then plunge, implying depth, so undermining
our belief in seeing – as a tree falls in the woods
when one is not looking… when one is not there.
We watch for specks, stray glints remaining
in that continuous waving that is without meaning
Ah but a rare bird… (like yourself) ...is rare.
