Poor Hogan wept so wearily At everything's transparency: Hearts and lovers, pretty faces, All that cruel Time erases;
But Hogan wept more wearily At his own transparency: No heart, no love, no pretty face, Nothing at all Time could erase.
Poor Hogan is a man in tears, and the first stanza tells us why: he sees through everything. Love, beauty, the people we hold dear, all of it is fragile, and Time wears it away. That would be sad enough. But the second stanza turns the poem on its head. Hogan cries even harder over himself, because when he looks inward he finds no heart, no love, no pretty face to lose. There is nothing in him for Time to take.
The joke, and the ache, sits in that reversal. Most of us grieve over what we'll lose. Hogan grieves because he has nothing to lose, and so, in a strange way, he's already gone. The word "transparency" does the work here: the world is see-through to him, and he is see-through too.
The tone is light and sing-song, almost like a nursery rhyme, which makes the emptiness underneath feel sadder. The poem is gentle, a little wry, and quietly bleak.