Like a Candle's Tiny Flame

“Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa;
Misericordia e giustiza li sdenga:
Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa.”

-Dante’s Inferno, III, 48-51.

A small, dark room with plain, white walls
A candle flickering on a table
Upon whose silent, somber light
I gaze and think of what I might
Have done when I was able.

On a cushioned chair I sit
All day long and all night long
But really there’s no day or night
My soul’s a wingless bird in flight
Fluttering towards some unseen height
But doomed to spiral down again
And sink in the depths of what might have been
Drowned
Yet never dying.

I’m all alone and here with me
My fixed, yet fleeting company
Of ghosts I neither hear nor see
But yet I know are all around
Flying about without a sound
And from the corner of my eye
I sense two figures standing by
I think, perhaps, I hear one say
As I turn my head and they fade away
“Questi non hannan speranza di morte.”

How poetic, I tell myself, as the words echo through my mind.

Fantasy can be so real
I think that days-gone-by still linger
And that I can change the course
Of the unrelenting finger
But then I sense
And then I know
It’s nothing but a picture show
I can not turn the pages back
Only think of what they lack
My mind forever on the rack

But it’s not all that bad
One gets used to it after a while
What is a while?

Life is brief but briefer still
Is that fleeting spark of will
Which if not fanned will never rise
Into a fire of any size
But dance forever before my eyes
Like a candle’s tiny flame
Never waxes, never wanes
In this fine and private place
Far from the world’s unsightly face
Here where the lark never calls
And where the evening never falls
In a small, dark room
With plain, white walls.