"We Met Under A Shower Of Bird-Notes"

As I noted in my previous post, R. S. Thomas and Mildred E. Eldridge (he called her "Elsi") were married for over 50 years.  As the old saw goes, none of us can ever know (or should presume to know) what goes on inside a couple's marriage.  However, I will nonetheless hazard a guess that 50 years of living with R. S. (as he refers to himself in his autobiographical piece "Neb," which translates into English from Welsh as "no-one") may not have always been a bed of roses or a walk in the park or a piece of cake (take your pick).

                             Mildred E. Eldridge, "Forest Friends" (1980)

Eldridge died in 1991.  A year after her death, Thomas's collection Mass for Hard Times was published.  It bears the following dedication:  "To the Memory of My Wife, M. E. Eldridge, 1909-1991."  The collection includes the following poem.  Thomas subsequently placed the poem at the end of his Collected Poems.  No other poem from Mass for Hard Times was included in the Collected Poems.

                                                  Mildred E. Eldridge
                          "Study of a Redpoll; Study of a Stonechat" (1975)

        A Marriage

We met
           under a shower
of bird-notes.
           Fifty years passed,
love's moment
           in a world in
servitude to time.
           She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
           closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
           'Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
           partner for
the last dance.  And she,
           who in life
had done everything
           with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
           for the shedding
of one sigh no
           heavier than a feather.

R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems (1993).

                                                     Mildred E. Eldridge
                                      "Study of a Turtle Dove at Bardsey"

This is one of those poems that I am reluctant to say anything about for fear of destroying it.  (Although this is true of any good poem, isn't it?)  At the risk of sounding fuzzy-minded, sentimental, and romantic, I'm afraid that my "literary analysis" of the poem begins and ends with this:  it took my breath away when I first read it 18 or so years ago, and it took my breath away when I read it today.  Others, of course, may feel differently.

              Mildred E. Eldridge, "Musicians and Bee-Keepers" (c. 1950s)

"A Blackbird Singing"

Thomas Hardy's frail thrush flinging his soul upon the gloom brings to mind R. S. Thomas's blackbird.

Thomas was a devoted bird-watcher.   Although he seldom travelled abroad, he did go on bird-watching excursions to Denmark (where he "had a chance . . . to enquire about Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian [nice piece of wit and/or understatement, that!], although he did not get time to find his grave"), and, later, to France and Spain.  In France, after he and his companion were spotted getting out of their car carrying binoculars, "officers from the air force arrived and arrested them for spying!  The rest of the day was spent answering silly questions from the air force and the police, who had come all the way from Bordeaux to cross-examine these two dangerous men!"  R. S. Thomas, "Neb" ("No-one"), in Autobiographies (translated from the Welsh by Jason Walford Davies) (1997), page 68.

 

                                                      Mildred E. Eldridge
                                        "Birds on the Seashore" (c. 1950s)

               A Blackbird Singing

It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes'
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.

You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.

A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history's overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.

R. S. Thomas, Song at the Year's Turning (1955).

                            Mildred E. Eldridge, "Rain on the Hill" (1936)
                                   
R. S. Thomas and Mildred E. Eldridge were married for over 50 years.  She died in 1991.  He died in 2000.  I intend to look at "A Marriage," his wonderful poem about her, in a future post.