All things burn slowly
Dim
And I
Like one whose sight
Is failing him,
Turn inward at the widening gyre
To moth-drawn brightness, and desire.

Each ragged impulse
Spurs
While we,
Caught up in life’s
Enchanted verse
Score some soft lonely, passing beat
While dactyls trip each slim deceit.

‘Til life has fled us
Long,
They may,
Who did but know
When right was wrong,
Find all is echoes and refrain
Where gods once tapped each window pane.

David Lewis Paget