Love Untethered
Is it better to feel pain
Than nothing at all?
My son has followed
Me now for thiry-four years
Up hill, down dale.
He’s been AWOL
From this world
For all except his mother
& his family
& I who still cry
For him. On one black
December night
I carried his medicine-
bruised body
through the ward —
dodging the sight lines
of terrified parents —
into the mortuary
where I kissed
his so fragile head
with its veneer
of thin dark hair
and I said goodbye
to our beautiful boy.
I do not keen & weep
For Kieran. Instead
I wail in the silent vale
Of lamentation.
Where I remain.
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John Marks
Wed 22nd Nov 2023 20:19
Thank you Tom, Hugh, John G, Alexia, Stephen, Russell & Steve. Over 400 years ago Ben Jonson lost his 7 year old son, Benjamin, and I take succour from his words across the centuries:
On my First Son
BY BEN JONSON
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.