A REFUSAL TO MOURN THE DEATH BY FIRE, OF A CHILD IN LONDON.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

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.

Copyright. Dylan Thomas Collected Poems 1934-1952 London, Dent, 1984.

Comments

[umpachki.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmmmm.

I have the DT box set...

11 CDs, nothing but Dylan DYlan DYLAN

This one is on there.

Very good.

[marka-.livejournal.com]

Ha
me too
or, rather, a bastardized burned copy

[theodicy.livejournal.com]

A critic asked, "Does it change our perception of this poem to know that the dead child Thomas wrote about was actually a boy?" I say no, not at all.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

No, it doesn't, but it does raise the question as to why the child was made female. Answer: because that makes for a more poetic topic, probably.

I love this poem. I know why and how Thomas builds its effects, right up until the shattering final line. Yet I'm a bit bothered that he changed the gender. Isn't a boy's death heartrending too?

There are a dozen clustering assumptions about relative human value, about grief, about boys and girls and their behavior, that must have gone into the decision. Poe said "the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetic topic in the world."

Understood that Poe suffered the early loss of his child-bride. (Sorry, but 13 is too young.) Understood that we're talking not about an actual human loss, but about what's most likely to tug the reader's heartstrings. But still, but still -- part of me is yelling "Bullshit." There are great poems about dead girls (by Millay, by Wilde, by Goethe, among others), but my God, the death of anybody is not a "poetic topic." And boys deserve our grief as well.

Housman wrote movingly about dead young men. So did many of the war poets. But there is an ingrained sexism here, and it bothers me.

Forgive my rant. I've thought a great deal about grief and loss. One of my nieces -- tall, blonde, blue-eyed, slender, beautiful -- died a few years ago on the verge of her marriage. One of my closest friends died this year. Antony embodied none of the poetic beauties that Diane died, but I miss him too, and he deserves to be mourned. Her death is not made worse by her beauty, and couldn't be made better if she were plain. It doesn't work that way.

[theodicy.livejournal.com]

I'm touched by the pain and frustration that comes through your comments. You've seen my memorial page; in the following 14 months I lost 3 more family members, two to suicide, and two more family members were diagnosed with cancer, one being my mother. (She's doing okay now.)

My feelings about Thomas and his choice to change the sex of the child? Because "daughter" and other associative words had better qualities of scansion and rhyme. Sometimes I think Thomas chose words for their atavistic effect, their ability to lull or excite or compel at a level below consciousness. This is badly said, I know, but oddly I was considering that idea this afternoon while reading something else entirely. Odd you should comment on it.

But you are correct in intimating that much of what passes for sentiment and poetic style is mawkish and sexist and ill-considered - at best. Any extinction of life is a cause for sorrow, even when it brings an end of suffering and pain.

And the final line - "After the first death, there is no other" - what the hell? If he means the fall from innocence, I think, and continue to think, that there are many such deaths.