All Things Burn Slowly

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