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 humbling¹ 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 bead²

　　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 majesty³ 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

　　Elegy⁴ of innocence⁵ and youth.

　　Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter，

　　Robed in the long friends，

　　The grains beyond age， the dark veins⁶ of her mother，

　　Secret by the unmourning water

　　Of the riding Thames.

　　After the first death， there is no other.