Two Poems by Saunders Lewis

As we begin Holy Week this year Tim Griffin, who attends Holy Cross Catholic church, Gellilydan when he is in North Wales, introduces two poems by Saunders Lewis, one of the founders of Plaid Cymru, the Party of Wales. 

John Saunders Lewis, 1893 – 1985, left, photographed with D.J. Williams and Lewis Valentine.

This year will mark the centenary of the founding of Plaid Cymru or The Welsh Nationalist Party as it was first known and one of its founder members and President until 1939 was Saunders Lewis. As well as his achievements in the field of politics he was a great champion of Welsh language and culture and produced essays, plays and literary criticism. His life was eventful and hugely influential but it is to his poetry and his Catholic faith (he was received into the Catholic Church in 1932) which I would like to turn for the purposes of the Faith Forum. 

I would like to share two poems which I found in Presenting Saunders Lewis, edited by Alun R. Jones and Gwyn Thomas and published in 1973. The stated aim of the book, according to the notes on the dust jacket, was to ‘present to an English-speaking public a coherent impression of his achievement.’ The authors go on to say in their acknowledgements that ‘In Welsh-speaking Wales he has influenced the thoughts and feelings of three generations, although in the English-speaking world he is little known.’ 

Gwyn Thomas, the translator of these poems, tells us that Saunders Lewis only published about thirty poems but these two, touching as they do on events during the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord, reveal a deeply-held faith and a powerful poetic sensibility. The events as related in the Gospels are brief but Saunders Lewis in both cases provides a reflection or meditation that allows us to enter the heart and mind of The Good Thief beside the crucified Christ and of Mary Magdalene before her risen Lord.

(For an interesting recent article about Saunders Lewis' turn to Catholicism, click here.) 

~~~

Crucifixion by Hans von Tübingen (1380-1462)

TO THE GOOD THIEF

You did not see Him on the mountain of Transfiguration
        Nor walking the sea at night;
You never saw corpses blushing when a bier or sepulchre
        Was struck by his cry.

It was in the rawness of his flesh and his dirt that you saw Him,
        Whipped and under thorns,
And in his nailing like a sack of bones outside the town
        On a pole, like a scarecrow.

You never heard the making of the parables like a Parthenon of words,
        Nor his tone when He talked of his Father,
Neither did you hear the secrets of the room above,
        Nor the prayer before Cedron and the treachery.

It was in the racket of a crowd of sadists revelling in pain
        And their screeches, howls, curses and shouts
That you heard the profound cry of the breaking heart of their prey:
        ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’

You, hanging on his right; on his left, your brother;
        Writhing like skinned frogs,
Flea-bitten petty thieves thrown in as a retinue to his shame,
        Courtiers to a mock king in his pain.

O master of courtesy and manners, who enlightened you
        About your part in this harsh parody?
‘Lord, when you come into your kingdom, remember me,’ —
        The kingdom that was conquered through death.

Rex Judaeorum; it was you who saw first the vain
        Blasphemy as a living oracle,
You who first believed in the Latin, Hebrew and Greek,
        That the gallows was the throne of God.

O thief who took Paradise from the nails of a gibbet,
        Foremost of the nobilitas of heaven,
Before the hour of death pray that it may be given to us
        To perceive Him and to taste Him.

~~~

Noli me tangere by Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1489–1534)

MARY MAGDALENE

'Touch me not'

About women no one can know. There are some,
Like this one, whose pain is a locked sepulchre;
Their pain is buried in them, there is no fleeing
From it and no casting it off. No ebb
Nor tide of their pain, a dead sea without
Movement upon its depth. Who—is there anyone—
Who will take away the stone from this sepulchre?

See the dust on the path lamely dragging:
No, let her be, Mary moves towards her peace,
Deep calls unto deep, a grave for a grave,
A carcass drawing towards a carcass in that unhappy morning;
Three days was this one in a grave, in a world that died
In the cry in the afternoon. It is finished,
The cry that drew blood from her like the barb of a sword.

It is finished. Finished. Mary fell from the hill
To the emptiness of the last Easter, to the pit of the world
That was no other than a sepulchre, with its breath in a mute grave,
Mary fell into the startling death of perdition,
A world without a living Christ, the horrifying Sabbath of creation,
The abyss of the hundred thousand centuries and their end,
Mary lay down in the grave of the trembling universe.

In the hollow of the night of the senses, in the cauldron of smoke;
The great hair that had wiped his feet turned white,
All the flowers of memory withered except the rain of blood;
Cloud upon cloud upon her, and their foul odour
A cinder in her throat, wasting her sight
Until with their sharp horror God was extinguished,
In the dying together, in the burying together, frowned upon.

See her, Christ’s Niobe, drawing with her towards the hill
Through the dark dawn, through the cold dew, through the heavy dust
The rock of her pain from the leaden Easter
To the place where there is a stone that is heavier than her torn heart;
Uneasily the awkward feet find their way over thorns
With the annoyance of tears doubling the mist before her,
And her hands reaching out to him in barren grief.

One luxury only under the heavens remains,
One farewell caress, the gentleness of memory, one
Last carnality, sad-consoling, dear,
To weep again over His flesh,
Anoint the feet and wash the harsh wounds,
To kiss the ankles and wipe them once more with her hair,
To touch Thee, Rabboni, O Son of Man.

Let us have pity upon her. He did not pity her.
Beyond pity is that burning, pure love,
That steels the saint through pain on pain,
That pursues the flesh to its stronghold in the soul, and its home
In the heavenly spirit, and its lair in the most holy,
That burns and kills and tears unto the last scrimmage,
Until it bares and embraces its prey with its steel claws.

Little did she know, six days before Easter,
Whilst pouring the wet, precious nard upon him,
That truly ‘it was against the day of my burying she kept this;’
She did not think, so dear was his praise of her task,
That he would never ever again touch her with feet or hands;
Thomas could put hand to his thigh; but she, despite her weeping,
Henceforth under the woe of the Bread would come to her the broken body.

Behold her in the garden at the first colour of dawn;
She turns her eyes to the cave; runs,
Runs to the remains of her joy. Ah, does she believe,
Does she believe her eyes? That the stone is down,
And the sepulchre empty, the grave bare and silent;
The first lark rising over the bald hill
And the nest of her heart empty, and escheat.

Her moan is as monotonous as a dove's,
Like Orpheus mourning Eurydice
She stands amongst the roses and cries without mourning
‘They have taken away my Lord, taken Him away,’
To disciple and angel the same cry
'And I know not where they have laid Him;
And to the gardener the same frenzy.

Made wild. Broken. She sank within herself in her grief.
The understanding reels and reason's out of joint, until
He comes and snatches her out of the body to crown her—
Quickly like an Alpine eagle falling on its prey—
With the love that moves the stars, the power that is a Word
To raise up and make alive: ‘and He said unto her, Mary,
She turned herself and said unto Him, Rabboni.’