Dylan Thomas(1914–1953)

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 c o m e of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round

Zion8 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 i n n o c e n c e and youth.

D e e p with the first dead lies London's daughter,

Robed in the long friends,

T h e grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.9

After the first death, there is no other.