R.S. Thomas was priest who spent much of his ministry in a seaside village on the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales. He was also one of the great religious poets of the 20th century. Last week I featured a poem about why he prayed. Continuing the theme, this week is another of his poems. He imagines a sleepless night in his house, listening to the sounds of the night and the waves and this leads him to think of how the God receives the constant hum of prayer, since the start of humanity. The God who neither slumbers nor sleeps.
The Other.
There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity
Rev David Poyner