After The Prelude

And then, the lighting of the lamps,
Glowing coals of fire dying down.
Then, the smoke that fills the room,
Clinging to walls, creeping through halls;
Evening papers in the waning light,
That crumple down as silence calls.

The night is warm.
Through windows I can see
The swarm of mankind sweep.
Streetlights cast their shadows
On every shaded home.

This is the cold and silent night.
This is the walled-in night,
Where children's games.....
Are children's games.
Years will separate their names.
This year.....I pause to watch the flames
With cold elation.

The coals die out.....
Smoke is all they leave.
Even that will thin;
Leave the room to me.

Soon.....
The putting out of lamps.

Let darkness fall.....
And peace.

Written the Spring of 1970 by James R. Hoye

Ireland 1972 - A Fragment

Eagle pyrning in a gyre,
Wings of azure, eyes of fire;
		
Cry the holocaust a'nearing.
The ghost of William Yeats is stirring.	
			
Cry the fires of Ireland burning.
The ghost of William Yeats is turning.

Cry your cry, so agonizing.
The ghost of William Yeats is rising.

Cry the Irish heroes a'sleeping.
The ghost of William Yeats is weeping.

Echo the sounds of Ireland, dying.
The ghost of William Yeats is crying.			
Cry with Yeats, poor Ireland's plight.
Cry the coming of the night.	

Written in the Spring of 1972 by James R. Hoye

On My Father's Illness

It's been a long day's journey.....
He is weary. 
A lifetime turns
And spires towards its end,
Such end as must be.....
Not of his own choosing.

Time has turned.....
He's coming to an end,
Too soon,
And yet, not soon enough.

He's not the man he'd hoped to be.
He's not the man he should have been.

A worm is gnawing at his brain,
Has gnawed there long,
Leaving death too subtly seen;
Death as sure as e'er might be,
Yet bitter, far more bitter.

It's a death he's come upon,
Long before the body's gone,

Those hands.....those palsied hands I see,
Once caromed with the best,
And caught and threw the ball in season.
That was in the past.

A pencil now, too much to hold,
Or cup or fork or slender spoon;
He struggles to touch where he might aim.
His night is coming much too soon;

Coming before his eyes might see it;
Coming before his hands might touch;
Coming before he hears or senses.

He senses.....
But, no longer, relates too much.

A shell, the remains of a man of stature;
The strength that was his,
Each day fades away.
A bitter reminder,
to we who have known him;
A bitter reminder,
We're all made of clay.

But though we may weep,
For the man he's become.
Though we may weep 
From our hearts filled with care.
The man that he was
Will always live on.
The man that he was
will always be there;
For that's the man we'll remember.

That's the man we'll remember.

Written the Spring of 1978 by James R. Hoye

Dali

I see a painting Dali never painted.....
Hitler on a cross.....laughing;
Bearing his albatross, the swastica,
New-burned on his chest at the hands of the Pope;
The background Jews, to the furnaces, forced,
Still having no cause for hope.

Not all Messiahs lead a just cause.
This.....Dali well knew,
And Hitler never stood alone
In persecuting Jews.

He didn't paint it.....he could have.
It's a picture born of the bones:
Like the crossed Christ he often presented,
Crowned with His garland of thorns;
Like the strewn hands of time in his deserts;
Like his bodies, fractured by needs;
Pulled in a thousand directions,
Distorted.....reflecting their deeds

Cherish him.....Cherish those like him.....
Projecting their world of bones.
Their talent lies in revealing
That world they must face on their own.

Scorned for the truth that they tender;
Doomed to dream, ever apart;
'Til, at last, they shall all lie together
In the bone shop of the heart. 

Written in April 1976 by James R. Hoye

In Memory of Dante Aligheri

Storms of fury,
Winds of might,
Both the warmth and chill of night,
Proclaim their master 
And their right to mourn him.

Shades of fire,
Lightenings mixed,
Dared to cross the river Styx,
And trod the path 
The fatal six had born him.

Then, resting there,
They joined their powers,
Those elements of fire, water,
Those sons of death and Chaos’s daughter.           

As blind components of the soul
They stood on some deserted knoll,
That they, at last, might give him praise,
Who called them from the nether haze.

They stopped and gazed on bended knee,
A gaze of wonder meant for he
Whose strength alone could yet enslave them,
And whose enslavement set them free.

Thus there, together, in the night,
Strange forces joined in praise of him
As in the darkness torn by light,
He journeyed to Elysium.....

Written the Fall of 1978 by James R. Hoye

Death Of A Statesman

He stepped, dissecting, into his lair.
He dropped his coat. His tousled hair
Must need his comb and patient hands,
And time, unclaimed by just demands.

He had it not. His hair must be
Denied that careful symmetry.
Not private to the public eye.
His cloak, neglected, still does lie

Crumpled, bloodstained, on the floor.
He surely needs its warmth no more,
Unless its folds can warm the face
Which death from time has now displaced.....
Give back the warmth, one time his own.

I'll comb his hair while he's alone.

Written in the Spring of 1964 by James R. Hoye