Wednesday 21 May 2008

A refusal to mourn the death,by fire, of a child in London




Never until the mankind making


Bird Beast and flower


Fathering and all humbling darkness


Tells with silence the last light breaking


And the still hour


Is come of the sea tumbling in harness




And I must enter again the round


Zion of the water bead


And the synagogue of the ear of corn


Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound


Or sow my salt seed


In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn




The majesty and burning of the child's death.


I shall not murder


The mankind of her going with a grave truth


Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath


With any further


Elergy of innocence and youth




Deep with the first dead Lies London's daughter,


Robed in the long friends,


The grains beyond age,the dark veins of her mother,


Secret by the unmourning water


Of the riding Thames.


After the first death,there is no other.

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