R. S. Thomas: Still
You waited with impatience
each year for the autumn migration.
It happened and was over.Your turn then. You departed,
not southward into the burnished
and sunlit country, but outinto the dark, where there are
no poles, no accommodating
horizons. Last night, as I loiteredwhere your small bones had their nest,
the owl blew away from your stone cross
softly as down from a thistle-head. I wondered.




