The Conversation of Prayers by Dylan Thomas

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The conversation of prayers about to be said / By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs / Who climbs to his dying love in her high room, / The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move

And the other full of tears that she will be dead, / Turns in the dark on the sound they know will arise / Into the answering skies from the green ground, / From the man on the stairs and the child by his bed.

The sound about to be said in the two prayers

For the sleep in a safe land and the love who dies / Will be the same grief flying. Whom shall they calm?

Shall the child sleep unharmed or the man be crying?

The conversation of prayers about to be said / Turns on the quick and the dead, and the man on the stairs

Tonight shall find no dying but alive and warm / In the fire of his care his love in the high room.

And the child not caring to whom he climbs his prayer / Shall drown in a grief as deep as his true grave, / And mark the dark eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep,

Dragging him up the stairs to one who lies dead.

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