Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid Was a Man Aged a Hundred
When 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.
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.
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