The Steadfast Tin Soldier

by Evelyn Hooven (April 2025)

I know now—
Hard to mourn
And come to know
At the same time.
–
My costume was frail
My dance wilder
But the one
Who went up in flames
Was you.
–
In the legend
She is the one in motion
But for a fragment
Flames devour her
Entirely.
–
The soldier slowly
Lifts the fragment
Places it inside the coat
Right at his heart,
–
The steadfast soldier
Continues at his post
Sorrow alters his march
My own dance is lost
How must I move?

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Evelyn Hooven graduated from Mount Holyoke College and received her M.A. from Yale University, where she also studied at The Yale School of Drama. A member of the Dramatists’ Guild, she has had presentations of her verse dramas at several theatrical venues, including The Maxwell Anderson Playwrights Series in Greenwich, CT (after a state-wide competition) and The Poet’s Theatre in Cambridge, MA (result of a national competition). Her poems and translations from the French and Spanish have appeared in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, ART TIMES, Chelsea, The Literary Review, THE SHOp: A Magazine of Poetry (in Ireland), The Tribeca Poetry Review, Vallum (in Montreal), and other journals, and her literary criticism in Oxford University’s Essays in Criticism.

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