In Memoriam: MEE by RS Thomas

The ashes of Mildred Elsi Thomas, an artist whose great talent still has to be appreciated and wife of the poet RS Thomas, lie in a graveyard above the cliffs at Llanfaelrhys on the Llyn Peninsula. The stone says just “Mildred Elsi Thomas, 1909-191.”

But this is the poem Thomas wrote in memoriam. It’s a slight, beautiful poem that captures the understatedness of both her art and herself. She loved to be alone painting, often the skull of a bird. The remoteness of the place and the cry of the seabirds and the wind would inspire her forever.

The poem is address to MEE not MET. Eldridge was her maiden name. It’s as if in death Thomas cannot claim her as a wife. She is free again.

In Memorian: MEE by RS Thomas

Others

will come to this stone

where, so timeless

the lichen, so delicate

the brush strokes

it as though

with all windows wide

in her ashen studio

she is at work forever.