[Matt Q]

Hi Alex,

I think the switch to "insight" clarifies things a little for me, since it allows the insight to occur after the night club love-flaring of youth, when presumably the men had little or no insight. However, I still struggle to understand the final sentence.

Insight distilled through years of twilit blights

I take it "distilled" is the main verb here (though I do also find myself trying to read this is a noun-phrase, i.e, "insight that had been distillled...", but then no other candidate for main verb comes). So, there already was insight, prior to the years of blight, but these twilight years later clarified/purified it. So, I'm reading: after those love-flaring years we gained some insight (into love, maybe, or into women, or life) and that was clarified/purified by the hardships/challenges of old age.

till left in homes / beyond our bygone nights

here I read: until it (the insight) was left in homes / beyond our bygone nights.

So, what does it mean for the insight to be left in homes? Where do the men go, leaving their their homes and their insight behind them? Or do the men stay in the homes, and their distilled insight is left (behind) in the past? Ah, or do they die in these homes, leaving their insight behind them. I guess the homes could be marital homes or they could be care homes. In the UK, at least, "home" is often used as shorthand for "care home".

Ah, thinking of the blights of old age, maybe they lose the insight as their minds deteriorate into dementia?

Or do you mean that "until we were left in homes"? But I don't think that this is what the sentence says. The subject seems to be "insight", not "we".

best,

Matt