Pilgrimages

There is an island there is no going

to but in a small boat the way

the saints went, travelling the gallery

of the frightened faces of

the long-drowned, munching the gravel

of its beaches. So I have gone

up the salt lane to the building

with the stone altar and the candles

gone out, and kneeled and lifted

my eyes to the furious gargoyle

of the owl that is like a god

gone small and resentful. There

is no body in the stained window

of the sky now. Am I too late?

Were they too late also, those

first pilgrims? He is such a fast

God, always before us and

leaving as we arrive.

There are those here

not given to prayer, whose office

is the blank sea that they say daily.

What they listen to is not

hymns but the slow chemistry of the soil

that turns saints' bones to dust,

dust to an irritant of the nostril.

There is no time on this island.

The swinging pendulum of the tide

has no clock: the events

are dateless. These people are not

late or soon: they are just

here with only the one question

to ask, which life answers

by being in them. It is I

who ask. Was the pilgrimage

I made to come to my own

self, to learn that in times

like these and for one like me

God will never be plain and

out there, but dark rather and

inexplicable, as though he were in here?

R. S. THOMAS (1913-2000)

R. S. Thomas was a Welsh priest-poet, in my opinion one of the finest poets of the 20th century writing in English. His early poems dealt with the bleak existence of Welsh hill farmers. His later more metaphysical work explored questions of God, belief and the nature of human existence. Thomas was a passionate Welsh republican who spoke out on political issues such as holiday homes, the Welsh language and nuclear disarmament.

The island location of this poem Pilgrimages is Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli) which is one and a half miles long, less than half a mile wide and lies off the tip of the Lleyn peninsula in North Wales. I have been there in the "small boat" Thomas mentions and seen the "stone altar" he describes. It is hauntingly beautiful. It has been a place of pilgrimage since Christianity's early days.