He Sees No Sunbirds Now Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

While the bright sunbirds,
plumed with light, kindle the trees with song
(in the late and all-but-consumed summer) ,
in his outstaring eyes the moth wings
the long greying day to his sequestered room

and flits against the murmuring window panes.
Its late, perplexing quest for the candle,
still unlit, he has gathered. And retains.
His eyes dissolve a measure of the quickening gloom,
but shiver across sunlight’s dust upon the sill.

The candle faintly glows. Outside the bird
is the tree. Is the night. Unheard.
And the moth batters the image of the flame
reflected in the window pane.