The Other

(Peggy’s Cove from the Rocks, Nova Scotia, by Hilton
Hassell, 1910-1980, Canadian artist)

“What I’m after,” the poet R. S. Thomas once said, “is to demonstrate that man is spiritual.”

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.

~ R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet