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welsh landscape
by R. S. Thomas

Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000) was a Welsh poet and Anglican Clergyman, noted for his nationalism and spirituality. He was the best known Welsh poet of his day.
Source: Wikipedia

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Welsh Landscape

To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for instance,
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song.

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Your turn

Write a poem about a landscape. Send it to us.

Your texts

My perfect landscape

I'm alive
My skin's intact
To restart
To make it different
I have expelled the problem
And nobody is going to eat that fruit again
My paradise
My perfect landscape.

Eric Ramirez Rodriguez

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