I've been trying to find a poem I heard many years ago on BBC "Woman's Hour". The only line I can remember is "and bricks of blood". I think the previous line is something like "With walls (or stones) of flesh" but it is so long ago I'm not sure. Can anyone help? It's driving me crazy. Thanks.

The poem is called 'Death of a Son' and is by Jon Silkin...

Here it is, but I am not sure if the division into stanzas is correct...


Death of a Son

(who died in a mental hospital aged one)


Something has ceased to come along with me.
Something like a person: something very like one.
And there was no nobility in it
Or anything like that.

Something was there like a one year
Old house, dumb as stone. While the near buildings
Sang like birds and laughed
Understanding the pact
They were to have with silence. But he
Neither sang nor laughed. He did not bless silence
Like bread, with words.

He did not forsake silence.
But rather, like a house in mourning
Kept the eye turned in to watch the silence while
The other houses like birds
Sang around him.

And the breathing silence neither
Moved nor was still.

I have seen stones: I have seen brick
But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone
But a house of flesh and blood
With flesh of stone
And bricks for blood. A house
Of stones and blood in breathing silence with the other
Birds singing crazy on its chimneys.

But this was silence,
This was something else, this was
Hearing and speaking though he was a house drawn
Into silence, this was
Something religious in his silence,
Something shining in his quiet,
This was different this was altogether something else:
Though he never spoke, this
Was something to do with death.

And then slowly the eye stopped looking
Inward. The silence rose and became still.
The look turned to the outer place and stopped,
With the birds still shrilling around him.

And as if he could speak
He turned over on his side with his one year
Red as a wound
He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
and he died.

In the interests of pedantry, a correctly formatted version of the poem is below. For some reason, line indentation seems to be missing although I did type in spaces - I'm a newcomer to this forum but I have heard rumblings about this problem...


Something has ceased to come along with me.
Something like a person: something very like one.
And there was no nobility in it
Or anything like that.

Something was there like a one year
Old house, dumb as stone. While the near buildings
Sang like birds and laughed
Understanding the pact

They were to have with silence. But he
Neither sang nor laughed. He did not bless silence
Like bread, with words.
He did not forsake silence.

But rather, like a house in mourning
Kept the eye turned in to watch the silence while
The other houses like birds
Sang around him.

And the breathing silence neither
Moved nor was still.

I have seen stones: I have seen brick
But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone
But a house of flesh and blood
With flesh of stone

And bricks for blood. A house
Of stones and blood in breathing silence with the other
Birds singing crazy on its chimneys.
But this was silence,

This was something else, this was
Hearing and speaking though he was a house drawn
Into silence, this was
Something religious in his silence,

Something shining in his quiet,
This was different this was altogether something else:
Though he never spoke, this
Was something to do with death.

And then slowly the eye stopped looking
Inward. The silence rose and became still.
The look turned to the outer place and stopped,
With the birds still shrilling around him.
And as if he could speak

He turned over on his side with his one year
Red as a wound
He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
and he died.

- Jon Silkin (1954)

Anneliese, the only way you can insert spaces and have them work is to use the html code for a non-breaking space. Tedious beyond belief.

Anneliese, thank you so much for your reply. How did you find this poem? Were you familiar wth it already? It must be over 30 years ago since I heard it on the radio. When I read it I was so moved I felt totally stunned and it has been haunting me all day. Thanks again.

Copy and paste this link into your address box: the poem and many other fine poems (including another Jon Silkin classic) are mentioned there:

[www.emule.com] />


Post Edited (12-05-03 13:19)

Stephen