The Face Songtext
von R. S. Thomas

When I close my eyes I can see it
That bare hill with a man ploughing
Corrugating that brown roof under a hard sky
Under him is the farm anchored in its grass harbour
And below that the valley sheltering its few folk
With the school and the inn and the church -
The beginning, middle and end
Of their slow journey above ground


He is never absent but like a slave
Answers to the mind′s bidding
Endlessly ploughing as though
Autumn were the one season he knew
Sometimes he pauses to look down
To the grey farmhouse
But no signals cheer him, there is no applause
For his long wrestling with the Angel of No Name

I can see his eye that expects nothing
That has the rain's colourlessness
His hands are broken but not his spirit
He is like bark weathering on the tree of his kind

He will go on, that much is certain
Beneath him tenancies of the fields will change
Machinery turn all to noise
But on the walls of the mind′s gallery
That face with the hills framing it
Will hang unglorified but stern like the soil