New Moon

R. S. Thomas was Welsh and an Anglican priest. Wales and England are full of achingly empty yet beautiful stone churches. Many of the ones in West Wales are near the ocean. Thomas's poems are full of anguish that the old faith no longer seems credible for him or most others. This poem is rare because in the middle of his anguish another voice speaks hopefully.

The Moon in Lleyn

The last quarter of the moon
of Jesus gives way
to the dark; the serpent
digests the egg. Here
on my knees in this stone
church, that is full only
of the silent congregation
of shadows and the sea's
sound, it is easy to believe
Yeats was right. Just as though
choirs had not sung, shells
have swallowed them; the tide laps
at the Bible; the bell fetches
no people to the brittle miracle
of bread. The sand is waiting
for the running back of the grains
in the wall into its blond
glass. Religion is over, and
what will emerge from the body
of the new moon, no one
can say.

But a voice sounds
in my ear. Why so fast,
mortal? These very seas
are baptized. The parish
has a saint's name time cannot
unfrock. In cities that
have outgrown their promise people
are becoming pilgrims
again, if not to this place,
then to the recreation of it
in their own spirits. You must remain
kneeling. Even as this moon
making its way through the earth's
cumbersome shadow, prayer, too,
has its phases.

My hunch as well is that the old faith is over. It's always having to get over its old self to be born again. It's not just that the serpent digests the egg, but as my friend Haidee Wilson suggests, 'the dragon begets the pearl.'