Borrowed Light

Borrowed light

It’ll be dark soon and time to go.

Could you pass the dice,

I’d like another throw?

Oh, I understand.  Club rules:

Just the once, never twice.

Yes, you’ve got to be kind to be cruel.

Well, a present, long in the unwrapping

And the children like animals,

Not knowing then warping,

Bending with the truth of it;

The knowledge of an unsteady sentinel

Watching over an illness that is implicit,

With happiness a symptom that reckons a cost:

All too brief a candle,

All too much found then lost,

But a gift all the same;

One we bestow, simply, as a mantle

For the igniting and sheltering of our flame;

As if the heat carried a living debt,

Paid tomorrow so to honour us;

For what shines is a currency yet.

The moon has risen, the darkness at its back -

Its mountains shadows, its deserts dust,

With somewhere on its conquered land a flag.

And the moon, oh why is it so cold, so bright?

Such a false god robed in borrowed light.