Walter Howard

Jack Powers

The lights slowly lowered...
Was it in Dawn's crazed, blinding explosion
        of pure light,
lashing night's clouds away?
Was it in sleepy, sluggish afternoon
in evening's cloaking shadows
was it when midnight's hand struck
framing the hours
that we lost him?
He of the trusting heart
He over whose vains poetry flowed
He who rescued poetry when
        poetry was stumbling--
               Enshrining 30-odd years of toil.

Poet! Your song the flung spear
        of your immortal life!
        Song of all the poets who had
               ever sung!
        You stood on the lid of night,
        on the shore of the immortal dark,
        on the undiscovered shore of this America,
               of the Boston you heald dear.
We honor you for you christened us
        with a new horizon!