Answering Back #9

A Refusal to Mourn

---

A Refusal to Mourn the Death

by Fire, of a Child in London

by Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953)

---

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.

---

---

A Refusal to Mourn the Death

by Bombing, of a Child in Gaza

by David Dayson after Dylan Thomas

---

Never will I mourn the passing
of the dead and most dead of all; 
children killed untimely, 
in their time of play.

I will not twice murder them
by forgetting once and forever.
Instead, I will enter the humbling darkness, 
of crushed Mosques and Hospitals,
once alive with prayer and healing.

Instead, I will walk this Riviera of blood, 
amongst the stillness of crushed concrete,
where no corn, but steel rods poke through.
I will not blaspheme this open tomb
with elegies of innocence and youth.  

No, never will I mourn, instead, I will pray 
they are received into Heaven and recite: 

‘This Day, the Garden dwellers 
will be busy in their joyousness.
You and your family will recline 
on couches; in shade and coolness.
You will have fruits and whatever 
You request in abundance.
The Ever Compassionate will greet you 
with a salutation of peace.’ *

This is the least I can do 
for Gaza’s daughter, 
deep with the first dead, 
dressed by her only friend,
the dark grief of her mother,
unknown by the unmourning
Mediterranean and River Jordan.
After the first death, there is no other.

* adapted Ya Sin Sura from the Qur’an
translated by Shawkat M. Toorawa  

---

---

Photograph, ‘The Mysteries. The Dove.’

Trapani Italy 1989, by Letizia Battaglia

(1935 - 2022)

---

---

If you have been, thank you for reading, and please do sign up for future editions.

---