Bleak Liturgies

As promised, some RS Thomas - an excerpt from his 'Bleak Liturgies, published in 1992

Shall we revise the language?
And in revising the language
will we alter the doctrine?

Do we seek to plug the hole
in faith with faith's substitute
grammar? And are we to be saved

by translation? As one by one
the witnesses died off
they commended their metaphors

to our notice. For two thousand
years the simplistic recipients
of the messag epointed towards

the reductionist solution. We devise
an idiom more compatible with
the furniture departments of our churches.

Instead of the altar
the pulpit. Instead
of the bread the fraction
of the language. And God
a shadow of Himself
on a blank wall.


The whole published in Thomas' Collected Later Poems by Bloodaxe Books.