Candles that Burn / Aline Kilmer

Candles that Burn

Candles that burn for a November birthday,
   Wreathed round with asters and with goldenrod,
As you go upward in your radiant dying
   Carry my prayer to God.

Tell Him she is so small and so rebellious,
   Tell Him her words are music on her lips,
Tell Him I love her in her wayward beauty
   Down to her fingertips.

Ask Him to keep her brave and true and lovely,
   Vivid and happy, gay as she is now,
Ask Him to let no shadow touch her beauty,
   No sorrow mar her brow.

All the sweet saints that came for her baptising,
   Tell them I pray them to be always near.
Ask them to keep her little feet from stumbling,
   Her gallant heart from fear.

Candles that burn for a November birthday,
   Wreathed round with asters and with goldenrod,
As you go upward in your radiant dying,
   Carry my prayer to God.

~~
Aline Kilmer (1888-1941)
from Candles that Burn, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Aline Kilmer biography

In Spring / Aline Kilmer

In Spring

I do not know which is worse when you are away:
    Long grey days with the lisping sound of the rain
And when the lilac dusk is beginning to fall
    The thought that perhaps you may never come back again;

Or days when the world is a shimmer of blue and gold,
    Sparkling newly in all the dear spring weather,
When with a heart that is torn apart by pain
    I walk alone in ways that we went together.

~~
Aline Kilmer (1888-1941)
from Candles that Burn, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Aline Kilmer biography

Things / Aline Kilmer

 
Things

Sometimes when I am at tea with you,
     I catch my breath
At a thought that is old as the world is old
     And more bitter than death.

It is that the spoon that you just laid down
     And the cup that you hold
May be here shining and insolent
     When you are still and cold.

Your careless note that I laid away
     May leap to my eyes like flame;
When the world has almost forgotten your voice
     Or the sound of your name.

The golden Virgin da Vinci drew
     May smile on over my head,
And daffodils nod in the silver vase
     When you are dead.

So let moth and dust corrupt and thieves
     Break through and I shall be glad,
Because of the hatred I bear to things
     Instead of the love I had.

For life seems only a shuddering breath,
     A smothered, desperate cry;
And things have a terrible permanence
     When people die.

---
Aline Kilmer (1888-1941)
from Vigils, 1921

[APoem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Aline Kilmer biography