The Lesson
The bird man explains
how the male bird has to establish
territory, advertise, by singing,
his presence.(Have you heard God
sing?) He demonstrates
how where you had thought
there was nothing a bird
crouches. (Protective camouflage?)
There is not one bird but thousands
and thousands of species, each
separable by its feathers.
The comparison fails
Here, life, it is true, has its feathers
but they are not all part of the plumage
of the one God. (Perhaps history
has its nights, when that God
roosts with his head hidden.)
No matter, they are alike, these two,
in migratory behaviour.
One day the hedges are alive
with hurrying bodies as a mind
is with thoughts. On the morrow
they are deserted, another country
becomes jubilant with bird notes.
Where has God gone? The mind’s branches
are empty and without
song. Their leaves are encrusted
with town dust.Return, migrant,
so your listeners arising
on some May morning of the spirit
may hear you whistling again
softly but more musically than any of their inventions.
The poet-priest is an ornithologist, one who is used to spotting and identifying those elusive flashes of colour, who knows a bird by its call and song, and who is familiar with the habitats and hiding places of the 'thousands and thousands of species, each separable by its feathers.'
The poem is about the mystery of 'migratory behaviour', the coming and going of birds through the seasons of the year. It's also about the advent and absence of God. Migration as metaphor, the migratory rhythms of coming and going helps the poet, and the reader, come to terms with those other anticipatory field trips looking for God, listening for the identifiable call, searching previously known habitats, trying to peer through the 'protective camouflage'.
'Have you heard God sing?' The first of three question marks is enclosed in parenthesis, as if "Well, reader, have you?". Thomas wants an answer. This first question is asked between the bird establishing the territorial imperative in the first four lines, and a warning to the bird-watcher that their search might reveal nothing, signalled by a second question mark – 'Protective camouflage?' The approach of humans is not to be trusted so birds hide, go silent, or take flight. 'The bird man' knows where the birds are to be found, and can identify them, see them, hear them.
'But the comparison fails.' God is not so easily spotted, or tracked down by our accumulated cleverness. God and birds are alike at least in this, their migratory behaviour; each can be here today and gone tomorrow. The poignant picture of bushes alive with colour and song one day, and deserted and silent the next, is a metaphor that uncovers the spiritual longing and frustrations of those who love God, seek God, need God; but who then discover God is not to be found on demand. At which point it might seem incongruous to introduce the astringent wisdom of Nanny McPhee: "When you need me, but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go."
But God's coming and going, this migratory behaviour of God, isn't comfortable, predictable, and reliable, a Nanny to the rescue. God is not defined or controlled by our needs. Sometimes in the places of deepest need, "history has its nights, when that God / roosts with his head hidden."
It is one of the most difficult and recurring seasons in any human life, and in the life of faith, "When the mind's / branches are empty / and without song," while adding hurt to sadness because "another country becomes jubilant with bird notes."
"Where has God gone?" It's a mistake to think that theology is always, or even, about finding answers. Thomas's question is that potent mixture of existential quest, philosophical enquiry, theological reflection and in the background, the shadows of science and technological power. The poet has been asking, knocking and seeking for years. And all this within a mind sometimes alive with thoughts of God, and sometimes deserted, empty without song.
I think Thomas would have appreciated the caution of these words: "It does not seem to me that answers are an exhaustive style of proper Christian teaching…Hans Frei spoke of Scripture and theology as a “leisurely unfolding of the inner logic of Christian belief,”…Such a program does not yield tidy or plain or crisp answers." 1 So Katherine Sonderegger, one of our finest writing theologians – in demanding, austere, passionate prose, that can sometimes read as poetry, she is utterly certain that God is who God is, not who or what we want Him to be. And God is where God is, not where we demand him to be.
In 1995 when this poem was written, at the age of 82, Thomas asks the question he has been asking with relentless persistence, this time with the blunt rudeness of any one of us. "Where has God gone?" Is God there but not seen – behind protective camouflage? "Have you heard God sing?" Yes, but a while ago now. This is the Rev R S Thomas the priest ornithologist, in pastoral mode, reassuring the reader that God comes and goes, at least our sense of God's presence does. But the seasons turn, the migratory cycle is not broken, May is coming.
So while the ending of the poem includes Thomas's characteristic antipathy to human inventions and machines (and it may be that by 'inventions' he is referring to institutional religion, liturgical contrivance and either a too safe or too reductionist theology) – nevertheless, the last few lines read like an invocation strengthened by previous experience and present hopefulness:
Return, migrant,
so your listeners arising
on some May morning of the spirit
may hear you whistling again
softly but more musically than any of their inventions.
Those lines could stand as the first Collect on Pentecost Sunday! Now add to all of this, those evocative first lines about the bird who establishes territory by singing his presence, and the metaphor comes full circle; or at least the migratory cycle of the Divine is complete.
1 'A Farewell to All That', Katherine Sonderegger, Pro Ecclesia, vol.31. Issue 4. Accessed Online, 25/02/23. This is a subscription only Journal.
'The Lesson', from R.S.Thomas. Uncollected Poems, (Eds) Tony Brown & Jason Walford Davies, Bloodaxe, 2013, page 121.
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