Brilliant Imagination

Go gather by the humming sea

Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell,

And to its lips thy story tell,

And they thy comforters will be,

Rewording in melodious guile

Thy fretful words a little while,

Till they shall singing fade in ruth

And die a pearly brotherhood

                W.B. Yeats

...... Male

as I am, my place, perhaps,

is to sit down in a mysterious

presence, leaving the vocabularies

to toil, the machine to eviscerate

its resources; learning we are here

not necessarily to read on,

but to explore with blind

fingers the word in the cold,

until the snow turns to feathers

and somewhere far down we come

upon warmth and a heart beating.

          

                R.S. Thomas