Poem of the week: Naming of the Bones

A poem by John F Deane inspired by the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London

London, June 2017

I looked up and saw you, your distorted body

writhing again in agony. There is a season, the Big Book says,

a time to die, a time to weep, and a time for peace;

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no one, it says, can understand what is happening under the sun;

I saw the bare breast heaving, that once beautiful breast;

I hurt for you, for your beloved once beautiful, body, each twist or twitch,

each reach and wrench adds to the fire in your flesh

and bones; I plead to creator lover God for you, to ease your pain,

to mother you. I wince once more at the bitter-spittle angers

of humankind: the blunted iron nails driven through your caring hands,

your tender feet; so that impossible you hang from them,

and stand on them; the muscles cramp and spasm, and your face,

so beautiful once, is contorted with sweat and ugliness, with

blood and sweat and tears. Today, my Christ, June 14, twenty-seventeen,

Grenfell Tower in London was engulfed in flames; inestimable

furnace, suffering unbearable. A child appears for a moment, at a window

of the sixteenth floor, a moment only, frantic, waving:

to a not-there-saviour; you? We hurt, my Christ, we hurt. Why is our spittle

hot with bitterness? Words, the Big Book says, can be

wearisome, a chasing after wind. And yet. . . the world breaks. The world

Re-forms. But the beautiful body breaks, and yields.

Yearning and grief trouble us. At the heart of it. You. Hurting.

John F. Deane

John F Deane’s recent books are the poetrry collection, “Semibreve” ( Carcanet ) and a memoir “Give Dust a Tongue” (Columba )