Ikea

Another RS Thomas poem

 

Gradual

 

I have come to the borders

of the understanding. Instruct

me, God, whether to press

onward or to draw back.

 

To say I am a child

is a pretence at humility

that is unworthy of me.

Rather am I at one with those

 

minds, all of whose instruments

are beside the point of

their sharpness. I need a technique

other than that of physics

 

for registering the ubiquity

of your presence. A myriad prayers

are addressed to you in a thousand

languages and you decode

 

them all. Liberty for you

is freedom from our too human

senses, yet we die

when they nod. Call your horizons

 

in. Suffer the domestication

for a moment of the ferocities

you inhabit, a garden for us to refine

our ignorance in under the boughs of love.