If the Heat Fades

If the Heat Fades

The darkly smoking pyres on distant hills,
Rage the affluent smoke of wasted years,
That teem and swirl with old men’s final fears,
And stoke a smolder that the young ought kill.
The charcoal burns by force of dreadnought wills,
And bellow clouds that blow the gusts of queer
Winds, that the cinders might inflame their peers;
A heap of molten ash, as if hell had spilled.

Its billows call for aid but who shall tell,
The keepers of the sign to cry aloud,
So to awake from slumber that did fell,
The giant lamplight and torched oil well.
Those carmine eyes broken by vein and cloud,
They could indeed make heathen hammers sound.