Poems for Mumbai’s dead

For Mumbai’s dead,There is no word, nor no grief, deep enough. Instead, poems by more gifted writers, for what solace they may offer.The Diameter of a Bomb.The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimetersand the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,with four dead and eleven wounded.And around these, in a larger circleof pain and time, two hospitals are scatteredand one graveyard. But the young womanwho was buried in the city she came from,at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,enlarges the circle considerably,and the solitary man mourning her deathat the distant shores of a country far across the seaincludes the entire world in the circle.And I won’t even mention the crying of orphansthat reaches up to the throne of God andbeyond, makinga circle with no end and no God.                                                                 — Yehudi Amichai[caption id="attachment_41239" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="There is no word, nor no grief, deep enough. indi.ca/Flickr"][/caption]For everyone who spent last night scouring the Internet, frantic for friends and family:Is there no thread to bind us — I and heWho is dying now, this instant as I writeAnd may be cold before this line’s complete?And is there no power to link us — I and sheAcross whose body the loud roof is falling?Or the child, whose blackening skinBlossoms with hideous roses in the smoke?Is there no love to link us — I and they?Only this hectic moment? This fierce instantstriking nowIts universal, its uneven blow?There is no other link. Only this slidingSecond we share: this desperate edge of now.— Mervyn PeakeFor a touch of Victorian affection, folk with some time in their day might attempt the rest of Kipling’s To the City of Bombay Surely in toil or frayUnder an alien sky,Comfort it is to say:"Of no mean city am I!"Neither by service nor feeCome I to mine estate —Mother of Cities to me,For I was born in her gate,Between the palms and the sea,Where the world-end steamers wait.Finally, to extract a brief smile on a bleak day, Roger McGough reading In Case of Fire: