Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid Was a Man Aged a Hundred
Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid Was a Man Aged a Hundred - meaning Summary
Old Life Struck by Violence
The poem describes an elderly man killed in a sudden dawn raid. It compresses action and image: doors blown open, the man falling where he loved, street and body transformed into violent, funerary landscape. The speaker resists ordinary disposal and demands dignity: do not treat his grey-haired heart as chained or his bones as refuse. The final images—morning in flight and storks—elevate his age and assert a reverent aftermath to the brutality.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen the morning was waking over the war He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died, The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide, He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor. Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun And the craters of his eyes grew springshots and fire When all the keys shot from the locks, and rang. Dig no more for the chains of his grey-haired heart. The heavenly ambulance drawn by a wound Assembling waits for the spade's ring on the cage. O keep his bones away from the common cart, The morning is flying on the wings of his age And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand.
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