Vernon Watkins

I have decided to do this once a month, that is , to print a poem by a major poet, a poem I like and hope that others will too.

This is by Vernon Watkins, Welsh poet, 1906-1967. He was a friend of Dylan Thomas.


The Revolutionary

I was that youth. Now from myself estranged,
after the revolution I was seeking,
I stop stone dead, to hear another speaking:
"Change nothing; you yourself must first be changed.'
I travelled seas and learnt to read a chart,
knew how to navigate through dispossession
the hardest straits, yet wrote in my confessions:
"All triumph was resisted by the heart."
Much evil and much good remain, and yet
the heart has no immaculate remedy.
Life, to be won, is won less easily;
the stars remind us: 'Your own eyes are set.'
Say of this patience that impatience gained;
when others left their station, he remained.