From  Tony Brady

 

I think this is the finest poem I have ever come across on the theme of prayer. It is by R S Thomas
 
The Other

There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.
 
 
It was first published in Thomas's little collection Destinations (1985) 
and is in Collected Poems 1945-1990.
I think it is one of his finest poems in fact. Very much an Aberdaron poem: 
his last church, of course was St Hywyn's, which is practically on the beach 
at Aberdaron at the far tip of the Llyn peninsula. (And he and Elsi lived on 
in the area after his retirement in 1978.)  "The Other" is painted (I think, 
rather than engraved) on a large piece of slate inside the church.  (RS was 
cremated and his ashes are in the graveyard of the Anglican church in 
Porthmadog.)