Read quickly, this short poem feels like a message from inside a trapped, anxious mind. The title, "Besieged," sets the scene: the speaker is under attack, though the enemies named in the first line are not soldiers but time and fear, which "devour us." The "us" makes it feel shared, as if everyone is caught in the same slow siege.
The second stanza turns strange and bitter. God is "glad now / to play at cards," as though the divine has lost interest in human suffering and is busy with a game. It's a darkly funny image, but it also suggests abandonment. The final lines shift to something more personal. The night is "made of paper," fragile and flimsy, and the speaker "bled ink," which suggests that pain is being turned into writing. The mood is bleak and uneasy, yet there is a hint that making words is the speaker's only way to respond.