My son, my executioner - Donald Hall

My son, my executioner,
I take you in my arms,
Quiet and small and just astir,
And whom my body warms.

Sweet death, small son, our instrument
Of immortality,
Your cries and hungers document
Our bodily decay.

We twenty-five and twenty-two,
Who seemed to live forever,
Observe enduring life in you
And start to die together.

From Brother Songs: A Male Anthology of Poetry. Ed: Jim Perlman.

One Day, by R S Thomas

In that day language
shall expose its sores,
begging for the alms
we can not give. 'Leave it'
we shall say, 'on the pavement
of the quotidien.' There is
a cause there is nobody
to plead, yet whose sealed lips
are its credentials. What
does the traveller to your door
ask, but that you sit down
and share with him that
for which there are no words?
I look forward to the peace
conferences of the future
when lies, hidden behind speeches,
shall have their smiles blown away
by the dove's wings, fanning in silence.

From A Mass for Hard Times, available here.