HENRY THOMAS KANE
Poems for the Long Remembering
Poetry
The poems of Henry Thomas Kane are shaped by memory, mortality, place, moral witness, faith, and the quiet endurance of what remains.
They return often to Ireland, to the weather of remembered places, and to the ordinary moments through which a life is understood.
Selected Poems
A selection from the work, including poems of memory, loss, place, repair, and return.
The Last Warm Light
The leaves have taken fire again
along the weathered lanes of stone and rain,
as if the trees have grown tired of green,
and must burn before the frost draws near.
Beyond the margins of dry-stone walls,
the russet fields lie rich and still.
Hawthorns darken their shadows by the gate,
and every lane that bends from my sight
seems made for parting, for farewell, whether soon or late.
There is a mercy, quiet and clear,
in what must fall.
The earth does not protest the turning,
nor curse the hour that gathers all.
A Half-Whispered Hymn
Faith had not gone anywhere.
That was the strangeness of it.
It had not packed its coat,
nor slammed the door,
nor left some clean absence
where I could point and say,
there, that is what I have lost.
No.
It had only gone quietly.
And quiet, I have learned,
can trouble a man
more than thunder.
There was a time
I longed for faith with weather in it—
lightning over the hill,
rain hard on the roof,
some holy disturbance
to prove the heavens
had not forgotten my name.
I wanted words, too.
Not empty words.
Good words, lifted words.
Words that could stand upright
before God and men.
Yet there is a kind of faith
that talks itself tired
and never moves its feet.
A Parting of the Ways
My last night in Dublin,
came down to this;
a table in a familiar
public house,
dinner finished,
the pints going slowly,
whiskey warming what
remained
of a long autumn
evening.
We told old stories
again,
as old friends are
entitled to,
and added one or two
we might tell next time.
We spoke of those
who had already gone
before us,
their names passing
quietly
among the glasses,
then raised another
to the hope of years still
left;
one more story,
one more roar of laughter,
one more season
we might somehow
share.
The Veil Grows Thin
I was but a boy
beneath the veil of
the year’s last breath,
when its shadows
murmured secrets
to the waning sun.
And the fields, long
shorn, lay dreaming
in their death,
while the ghosts of
harvest whispered, of
all that had begun.
The village bonfire
roared its ambered
hymn,
and I, fierce with
youth, became the
flame’s own kin.
Barefoot and breathless,
wild upon the rim
of worlds half lost,
and half waiting to
begin.
The sparks ascended, souls of
the forgotten dead,
rising to kiss
the darkened night’s
brow.
And through the
smoke, I thought I
saw them tread,
the old ones
watching, silent then
as now.
- What Love Keeps
- The Soul's Remembering
- Winter
- The Mercy of Light
- A Reasonably Honorable Man
- The Long Obedience of Small Repairs
- Silence is the Democracy of the Dead
- What the Past Cannot Keep
Selected poems appear here in excerpt while the work remains in active submission and publication.
Publication information and journal appearances will be added as the work appears in print and online.