Iago Petherich

Iago Prytherch

Watercolour - signed and dated 1994

Image size: 6.5ins x 6ins - Framed: 15ins x 14ins

Suggested Offer: £1,275

Exhibited in the R.B.S.A. 167th Annual Exhibition October 1994

Inspired by the poem "A Peasant" by R. S. Thomas.

Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed,
Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,
Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud.
Docking mangels, chipping the green skin
From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin
Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth
To a stiff sea of clods that glint in the wind
So are his days spent, his spittled mirth
Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks
Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week.
And then at night see him fixed in his chair
Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire.
There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind
His clothes, sour with years of sweat
And animal contact, shock the refined,
But affected, sense with the stark naturalness.
Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season
Against siege of rain and the wind's attrition,
Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress
Not to be stormed even in death's confusion,
Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars,
Enduring like a tree under the curious stars.