The Coming

• And God held in his hand
• A small globe. Look he said.
• The son looked. Far off,
• As through water, he saw
• A scorched land of fierce
• Colour. The light burned
• There; crusted buildings
• Cast their shadows: a bright
• Serpent, A river
• Uncoiled itself, radiant
• With slime.
• On a bare
• Hill a bare tree saddened
• The sky. many People
• Held out their thin arms
• To it, as though waiting
• For a vanished April
• To return to its crossed
• Boughs. The son watched
• Them. Let me go there, he said.

RS Thomas