16 of 30 Elegy for the Dying

You slack-rope walkers, jugglers of flaming torches
performing for circles of kin,
for the indifferent eye of god
in white rooms, and home in bed

the world is going, and you hold on to the scraps of it
the curled ash of testaments, of fever
you are halfway gone already
haunting your skin,
the body a failing machine,
black smoke of burning oil

your eyes are drinking in the world,
that is left, taking a small allotment of light
into the dark, It is too late.

a lifetime of action and inaction is resolved
already, and you are as forgiven as you will be

We cannot choose to go, or stay
and this antechamber is a burning house,
a remembered light. this wire, these numbers
these attendants in utilitarian blue are only smoke
we gather with you, to watch a world burn away