refers to the 'moths' in tennessee williams poem 'lament for the moths'. in this poem moths symbolise the quiet and sensitive people who are crushed by the 'heavy world'.this is the poem:

A plague has stricken the moths, the moths are dying,
thier bodies are flakes of bronze on the carpet lying.
Enemies of the delicate everywhere
have breathed a pestilent mist into the air.

Lament for the velvety moths, for the moths were lovely.
Often their tender thoughts, for they thought of me,
eased the neurotic ills that haunt the day.
Now an invisible evil takes them away.

I move through the shadowy rooms, I cannot be still,
I must find where the treacherous killer is concealed.
Feverishly I search and still they fall
as fragile as ashes broken against a wall.

Now that the plague has taken the moths away,
who will be cooler than curtains against the day,
who will come early and softly to ease my lot
as I move through the shadowy rooms with a troubled heart?Give them, O mother of moths and mother of men,
strength to enter the heavy world again,
for delicate were the moths and badly wanted
here in a world by mammoth figures haunted!

moths, as spiders, are also frequently mentioned in poems of sylvia plath (see for example what did my hands do before they held you.). vincent van gogh (see la tristesse durera [phrase]) was obsessed with death's head moths.