"The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb" is a narrative poem written by Mervyn Peake in 1947, and published with his felt-pen illustrations in 1962.
[1] A sailor wandering in London during a World War II air-raid finds a newborn baby in the debris.
He takes refuge with the child in an empty church, where it amazes him by levitating and speaking.
A dialogue follows between the child, fresh from eternity, and the man mired in the temporal world.
[2] The poem was set to music by Tristram Cary in 1964 in an arrangement for piano, woodwinds, percussion and tape with two spoken parts.