Permission to Mourn the Death of Another Child, by Fire, in Iraq

After Dylan Thomas

Never so busy is the trade of shroud-making
nor birds green filled with martyrs’ souls and Jasmin flower.
Childless fathers, opening eyes only to darkness,
tell of each dawn breaking
and each empty room yearning for the Just Hour,
is only kept breathing by Fate’s harness

and such tragic cycles will ever go round
as the seeker’s prayers are spoken, bead after bead.
War, a greedier crop than corn
shall choose to silence joy’s sound
and sight, and replace each bright seed
sown, with ash, leaving black cloth to mourn.

The only bliss the mother knows of the death
her child had no time to fear such murder.
Her heart can’t beat if she knows another truth
nor can her lungs care for the next breath.
Her air is underground, buried further.
Elegy is recited again for this land’s youth.

Deep in blood, Earth embraces her daughter.
Robed in white she will be joined by friends.
Grief is the breath of each mother.
Secrets of each living thing from water,
which quenches fire’s thirst, are whispered, when Tigris reminds the Thames:
After each death is the next first death. Every single other.

Abeer Ameer is originally from Iraq, but was made in England like the blue Cortina. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Planet Magazine, LossLit Magazine, and I Am Not A Silent Poet online blog. She is currently working on a collection of personal stories from Iraq.