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.
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Wino mourned
From guest Tough Is Not Enough (contact)
London's daughter... echoing to the modern disaster with the ongoing poisoning and drugs suicide of Amy Winehouse. The original child was not Jewish. So, now, "the Zion of the water bead and synagogue of the ear of corn" come to life. So Amy will lie, "secret by the unmourning water of the riding Thames." Or burned to ashes and sprinkled into the Thames to the tune "You Know I'm No Good." -
great
I thought this poem has great power and complexity. The water, religious and earthly images are outstanding. Also, the emjambment connecting the first and second stanza and also the second and third, brought a whole other reading to me. One question I had: the last line, is that refering to eternal life after death, no life after death, or the fact that the first death you encounter is the worse.
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