R.S. THOMAS

The Dark Well

They see you as they see you,

A poor farmer with no name,

Ploughing cloudward, sowing the wind

With squalls of gulls at the day's end.

To me you are Prytherch, the man

Who more than all directed my slow

Charity where there was need.

There are two hungers, hunger for bread

And hunger of the uncouth soul

For the light's grace. I have seen both,

And chosen for an indulgent world's

Ear the story of one whose hands

Have bruised themselves on the locked doors

Of life; whose heart, fuller than mine

Of gulped tears, is the dark well

From which to draw, drop after drop,

The terrible poetry of his kind.