Six short lines hold a whole small drama: a flame burns down, morning arrives, and one person misses it. No author's name or date comes with the poem, so everything worth saying has to come from the words on the page. Luckily, they carry a lot.
The first four lines describe a scene with nobody in it. The candle's flame is "drawing shapes from the shadows," which is a neat paradox, because a flame makes shadows as well as light. The shapes are what we invent in half-darkness, the figures we read into dim corners. This is a small, unreliable light, flickering and private, and it has a certain comfort. Then comes the verb "withered." We usually use it for plants, not wax, so the wick starts to feel like something alive and dying. That prepares us for the sun, which arrives as a natural replacement for a handmade light.
Line 4, "The sun rose," is the shortest in the poem, and it matters that it is so plain. There are no adjectives and no fanfare. The grammar helps too. The comma after "withered" lets the candle's end and the sun's beginning run together as one movement rather than two events. The sun does not announce itself. It just happens, whether anyone is looking or not.
That last idea is where the poem turns. "But" swings the focus onto "you," and the tone shifts from description to accusation. "Your eyes were closed so tight" is a vivid phrase because it describes effort. This is not someone peacefully asleep but someone squeezing their eyes shut, as a child does to make something go away. Then the poem delivers its quiet verdict: "You never considered the light." The failure is not cruelty but a lack of thought, and the word "considered" gives the line a faintly reproachful, schoolroom sound. Dictionaries often trace it to a Latin root connected with the stars, which would fit a poem about looking up and noticing.
The sound patterns tighten as the poem goes on. "Flickered," "withered" and "considered" all end in the same *-ered* sound, and they sit at the start, the middle and the close. That echo links the dying candle to the thoughtless listener, as if the same fading runs through both. Lines 2 and 4 are only a slant pair ("shadows" and "rose"), so the poem feels loose and unresolved for most of its length. Then the last two lines land on a full rhyme, "tight" and "light," and it clicks shut like the eyelids it describes. The rhythm helps. The early lines have an uneven, flickering pulse, while the final couplet settles into a steadier three-beat swing that makes the accusation feel definite.
The sounds inside the lines are well chosen as well. "Flame flickered" repeats the soft *fl*, which suggests a trembling light. The hissing *sh* of "shapes" and "shadows" suggests whispering in the dark. By contrast, "tight" and "light" are crisp and bright, and their short vowels make the ending sound final.
The title, "Who cares," and the word «Opaque» printed beneath it add a layer of irony. If «Opaque» works as a second title or label, as it seems to, it names exactly what the closed eyelids are: a barrier that light cannot get through. "Who cares" sounds like a shrug, the very attitude the poem criticises. But a poem that has bothered to describe a candle and a sunrise so carefully clearly does care. The title may be the voice of the indifferent "you," or it may be the speaker's defensive pose. I would argue the second reading is the more interesting one, since the tenderness of the imagery undercuts the title's pretended indifference.
The central idea is wilful blindness: the light is available, and the only thing between it and the person is their own choice not to look. The poem never says who "you" is or what the light stands for, so it can be read as a warning about clinging to the comfortable shadow-shapes of the past, or about ignoring truth, or simply about missing a good morning. That openness is what makes it significant. In six lines it builds a complete turn from scene to accusation, and it trusts the reader to see what the sleeper cannot.