So he sat, watching the armies of sparks that wandered through the fire. He spoke sometimes, but not to Father Adam.
‘Yet it still stands.’
Then he moaned and rocked himself. Once, much later, he started up and cried out –
‘Blasphemy!’
Hours later, when the fire was nothing but embers, he spoke again.
‘There’s a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.”
Séamus Sweeney 