Sorry

poem “Sorry” by R.S. Thomas looks at the parent child relationship differently. .
“Dear parents” is the opening quote of the poem, it seems as though R.S Thomas is writing a letter to his parents. The next quote, “I forgive you my life” has a lot of meaning. It means he forgives his parents for whatever didn’t go to plan in his life, or maybe any of the pain his parents blindly caused him. “Begotten in a drab town” he grew up in a dreary, uninteresting place. “Passing the street now”, this poem, like “follower is the poet looking back on their childhood, already it is clear that Seamus Heaney has a more happy memory of his past relations with his parents.

“You gave me enough food”, here, R.S. Thomas is about to tell his parents what it was of childhood that was wrong and that “kept me bent, as I grew tall”. From this we know there was something affecting him in a negative way as he grew up, and from verse two we also learn that it was “the minds weight”. We now know something was eating at him, or getting to him, and it most likely were something to do with his parents.
However, moving on to verse three R.S. Thomas tells his parents “it was not your fault”, maybe his parents blamed themselves for whatever went so terribly wrong, and these words would have been comfort to them coming from their son to find that he did not blame them after all. In general, here, Thomas is forgiving his parents for keeping in a good physical state while wounding his spirit.

“Arrow aimed from a tried bow, at a tried target, has turned back, wounding itself”

I think this quote has hidden meaning; I had to read it a few times before I could understand it! I think it means that someone tried to do something but it backfired on him or her.

I think this is a very meaningful poem with hidden depths, and I believe that only R.S. Thomas and his parents could understand the full poem! It is a very personal poem with a quite superior tone.

At first, I thought it was easy to translate this poem into my language, Indonesian, since the message to be sent by the author is about someone who is leaving the family. The difficulties arise not only from the meaning between the lines, but also in the choice of words to be used in Indonesian. I am not sure whether the translation has the same power or message as intended by the author, i.e. R.S. Thomas.

If we analyze it line by line, we can feel the power of wording Thomas chose.
Let's see it line by line.
From the title, it is noticed that the author or the subject in this poem felt sorry of going away or leaving the family. Then, the first line shows that this poem is just like a letter sent by a son/daughter to his/her parents.
"I forgive you my life' has a very deep meaning. It means that s/he doesn't really blame his/her parents for keeping him/her in the town because the parents want him/her not to be influenced by the bad things from different or even modern cities. This can be seen from the next two lines. 'Passing the street now' shows that the author is in the state on doing the runaway while 'I see still the remains of sunlight' shows that s/he remembers the beautiful days spent with the parents.

The next stanza is getting more difficult to analyze. However, the message there is that the parents give everything s/he want to fulfill his/her physical needs, but now his/her emotional needs, such as the need for knowledge or education.

The last stanza provides the hardest part to analyze. Here, the author tries to emphasize that s/he doesn't blame the parents (directly). The next line shows that someone has done something but it hurts the doer. Or in other words we can say that the author has tried to solve the problems by understanding what the parents have done, but s/he didn't get what s/he had wanted or expected.

I think, in general, the poem tells about the miscommunication between the parents and child that it leads the child to runaway.