The Moon & The Night

A Pair of Shoes - Vincent van Gogh, c.1885

Tension fades from taut eyes,

Keep watch with the lonely light;

A dissonance of heart,

A waning of sight.

In myriad thoughts

Borne out before my eyes,

Like the gentle thread of rain

As the winds begin to rise.

Swinging softly through the breeze,

I stooped to touch the sodden ground;

With eye submerged I sought with hand

But dirt was all I found.

A fizzling match struck

Behind a stricken window pane;

A distant fire flickers in time

To the melody of rain.

Upon this blackened heath,

I caught a strain amongst the leaves,

Threaded through the ebbing winds,

Entangled in the far-off trees.

It was but the memory

Of a shadow cast by flame,

A fading picture of glowing verse,

In a cold and lofty frame.

It was your beating heart

That tore the moon from the night,

That stripped the heart of the fire,

That snuffed the dying light.

It was your sweetest kiss,

That glorified its name;

It was your soul that seized its art

and thrust it into fame.

It was the friction of passion's rub

That wore away lust's wrinkled smile,

Discarded softly with a shrug,

And sought my petty heart beguiled.

And now alone beneath the night

Your face the night alone remembers,

For the picture that I held so dear

Lies ashen in the embers.

A passion that burnt so fierce

Consumed the fuel on which it fed,

Now naked, splutters in the hearth;

From savage blood in wild furore,

Unto the ebbing red.

- For you, in reverie.