Film: Night Moves

longing to howl. “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” one of his wartime poems, scorns conventional decent grief and embraces the glory of the divine arrangements behind this tragedy, however heartless they might seem. The inconsolable is consoled by the indifference of nature—“the unmourning water Of the riding Thames”—which possesses a majestic rightness that ordinary churchly sentiment cannot approach. Another great wartime poem, “Ceremony after a Fire Raid,” deepens the theme of the death of innocents:

Myselves The grievers Grieve Among the street burned to tireless death A child of a few hours With its kneading mouth Charred on the black breast of the grave The mother dug, and its arms full of fires.

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Thomas S. Hibbs

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longing to howl. “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” one of his wartime poems, scorns conventional decent grief and embraces the glory of the divine arrangements behind this tragedy, however heartless they might seem. The inconsolable is consoled by the indifference of nature—“the unmourning water Of the riding Thames”—which possesses a majestic rightness that ordinary churchly sentiment cannot approach. Another great wartime poem, “Ceremony after a Fire Raid,” deepens the theme of the death of innocents:

Myselves The grievers Grieve Among the street burned to tireless death A child of a few hours With its kneading mouth Charred on the black breast of the grave The mother dug, and its arms full of fires.