The Deaths of Children
 

The death of David Cameron's disabled son yesterday caused an outbreak of decency among politicians, including a surprisingly eloquent little speech from Gordon Brown (who also has a disabled son and also lost a child in infancy). If I had anything to say to Mr Cameron it would not be in my own words but in the words of better poets. I am thinking of Ben Jonson, who lost his own son Benjamin at seven years old, and the Latin poet Martial who wrote a number of short poems to his little slave girl Erotion, dead at five. I wonder if Sphereans have any favourite poems like these. Or indeed have written any.

I don't know the circumstances of this Christina Rosetti poem, but it may well fit your topic and is a favorite of mine:

BUDS AND BABIES.

A million buds are born that never blow,
That sweet with promise lift a pretty head
To blush and wither on a barren bed
...And leave no fruit to show.

Sweet, unfulfilled. Yet have I understood
One joy, by their fragility made plain:
Nothing was ever beautiful in vain,
...Or all in vain was good.

deaths of children
 

There is Dana Gioia's Planting a Sequoia, after the death of his and his wife Mary's first-born son, Michael Jasper, to SIDS:

http://www.danagioia.net/poems/sequoia.htm

And Pentecost, on the same:

http://www.squidoo.com/poetry-by-dana-gioia

(Scroll down for the poem)

Here is one of my own, from the book Winterproof, in the voice of a woman who has lost her child in utero:

Miscarriage
Jennifer Reeser


Fold this, our daughter’s grave,
and seal it with your kiss.
For all the love I gave,
you owe me this.

Inside of me, she had
your lips and tongue, my air
of grimness, thin and sad,
with your thick hair.

Inside of you, I trust,
she was a simple mesh
of need and paper, lust –
potential flesh.

And there was such pure song
in life begun from you,
I held the dead too long,
as women do,

but leaving (as you did),
when only I could feel
the biding, body, bid
of what was real,

she’s put out with the cur,
the garbage, heartache, cat.
Promise you’ll sing to her.
You owe me that.

Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.

Mark Twain

Elegy for Jane
(My student, thrown by a horse)
by Theodore Roethke

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

There's this one by Victor Hugo, which is about a visit to a child's grave:

Demain, dès l'aube

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

I feel the saddest is my own. In fact, it's so sad I'll not reproduce it.

I hate posting my own, but here I am - posting my own.


The Death of the Infant Sun

Perhaps we women laughed too loud, too long,
or not enough. Perhaps our sins were far
too large for God to overlook. How wrong
the darkness has become - how midnight-marred
each day begins and ends. There is no joy
in walking half the night - or counting stars
or dreaming back or looking straight ahead.
There is no daytime ruse we can employ -
no sleight of hand has ever brought the dead
sky back to light, concealed our scars, or paused
the anguish long enough for us to cry.

We women know that we alone have caused
the dark to fall - the light cast out our wombs to die.

________

Before the Coroner Comes

more notes from the back of an ambulance

This boy is dead and I won't think
of my own sons. Instead, I'll blink
and ponder on the mundane things, like why
death comes at change of shift and look how far
fresh blood can roam.

I hate the sight of bone-white chalk
the scent of death, the hum of talk.
This boy is dead - don't ask me what I know.
I'll not tell why but where some children die.
They die at home.

"How can this be?" his mother said.
"I left him sleeping, safe in bed."
I hold her back - her son is dead.
My boys are home. This is how love leaves us -
each alone.

Here's a link to another, drawn from current events:

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.or...ate=2006/07/17

It's not the sort of thing to say to the bereaved, but it shows us the pain.

Remembering Golden Bells Po Chu-i (772-846)

Ruined and ill—a man of two score;

Pretty and guileless—a girl of three.

Not a boy—but still better than nothing:

To soothe one’s feeling—from time to time a kiss!

There came a day—they suddenly took her from me;

Her soul’s shadow wandered I know not where.

And when I remember how just at the time she died

She lisped strange sounds, beginning to learn to talk,

Then I know that the ties of flesh and blood

Only bind us to a load of grief and sorrow.



At last, by thinking of the time before she was born,

By thought and reason I drove the pain away.

Since my heart forgot her, many days have passed

And three times winter has changed to spring.

This morning, for a little, the old grief came back,

Because, in the road, I met her foster-nurse.

Translated by Arthur Waley