Poetry

(after Eugene Lee-hamilton)

I

Under that sombre waning sun that shone overhead
I saw a strange kind of sight
that to mere man gives fright,
there was stirring the bleached bones of the dead

and chilling I had a feeling of utter dread
where I looked at a plane filled with strange light,
that had shattered darkness, had made day from night
while strange, flesh came to bones somewhere ahead,

while powerful an angel’s trumpet blared in the sky
like thunder roared, made the whole world shake
summoned the almost ceaseless numbers to identity
the awesome power of God was under my eye
while multitudes at its call did wake,
before their Lord quite suddenly forever free.

II

Under mountains in the hellish glare
the evil rulers and wicked men did not repent,
to conspire together they went
while every evil general gathered their,

but in that kind of lurid air
all sanity, everything good was amiss and spent
as if demons from hell to them did descent,
while fear rose with a kind of dark despair

while they who were lost wanted to win at all cost
and to means of war they sought after being transfigured
while in anger they mocked the very host
when in judgement the sound of the voice of God was heard
before they were thrown in fires of hell or into utter frost
when they were no more, as love is heaven’s final word.

[Reference: “On Two of Signorelli’s Frescoes” by Eugene Lee-hamilton.]