紫衣香翅 Purple Coat and Scented Wings
逐句解 Line by line
Always it loves the blaze and touches the flame, whirling about without rest.
忙忙飛繞 is a busy, unstopping circling — the word for busy doubled, which in spoken Chinese always means more of whatever it describes.
In purple coat and scented wings it chases the drifting fireflies.
The moth is dressed like a courtier. 紫衣 is purple robes, the colour of high office, so a common insect is given a rank — the kind of joke this verse form invites. 流螢 is drifting fireflies, and it is one of the most worn images in classical poetry, dropped in here beside a bug beating itself against a candle.
Best of all it likes the deep night when the wind is still.
Which is exactly now, and exactly what Pilgrim needs. The verse ends by confirming the conditions for the theft.
Three lines of pure ornament that turn out to be operational. Loves the flame, flies without stopping, works best in a still deep night — read as a moth it is natural history, read as Pilgrim it is a job description.
The purple coat is the tell. Nobody describes an actual moth as wearing the colour of court dress. The poem knows there is somebody inside it.