Text of poem - 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?

‘Pilgrimages’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Pererindodau #Pilgrimages
#YnysEnlli #BardseyIsland