I took this poem from “The Man Who Went Into The West,” Byron Rogers’s marvellous and funny biography of the Welsh poet R S Thomas, a man so curmudgeonly that when asked by English tourists for directions he, one of the greatest lyrical poets writing in English, would reply “no English.” He preferred solitude to company, rocks to people, and silence to conversation. The poem describes what Rogers found in carrier bags that were the remains of Thomas and his wife, Elsi, a gifted artist whose talent will soon be better recognised.

The skull of a hare

An envelope from L. Garvin, Honey Merchants, containing grey mullet scales

A cheese box containing a puffin’s beak

An envelope containing snow bunting feathers

A list of mills in Merionethshire

Letter from Elsi Thomas to Ronald and Gwydion Thomas on the subject of euthanasia

A book of phone numbers – containing none

An exercise book containing a hair prescription from a Dr Ferguson of Bromsgrove

Envelope containing grass seeds

Envelope containing an adder’s skin

Poem ‘The Betrothal’ by RST, and photo of RST

Large photo, sheep in a slate pen. 

Letter to the AA (containing feathers)

Envelope containing four-leaf clover from Manafon garden

Various brown envelopes (empty)

Envelope containing a single dead prawn