Constantly Risking Absurdity

Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London

Posted by Emily, comments (2)
Category: Dylan Thomas

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
Elegy 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.

Dylan Thomas

(Posted for Dawn Olsen)

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My sweet friend Emily, directed me to this site and a poem she found that seemed to express in a much more constructive way how we feel about the tragic loss of a child. While I use my anger to...
September 26, 2003 05:42 PM

Comment

Dawn said:

Death of a child is the greatest tragedy any heart can bear. I seem unable to disconnect myself from the pain of this magnitude.

Thank you Emily, for sharing in that pain that we who love children feel.

September 26, 2003 05:34 PM
Jon McMillian said:

Aye Dawn keep taking the pills

October 17, 2003 01:16 PM

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