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Candles on cakes has a religious origin: http://www.tokenz.com/birthday-candles.html http://www.history1700s.com/store/birthday-cakes.shtml and it's pagan as well, so double plus goodness: "Birthday Candle's History The use of the birthday candles on the top of the birthday cake dates back to the period of the early Greeks who were in the habit of placing these birthday candles on the top of the cake offered by them to Artemis - the Goddess of Moon. They had a notion that because of the lit candles on the round cake, it used to glow like the moon. According to their practice, a big candle was placed in the middle of the cake, which used to represent the 'light of life'. According to another notion, people placed candles on the top of the birthday cakes because they believed that there were Gods in the sky who would get your prayers with the help of the burning birthday candles. " Although how much weight you place on these sources ... Roger On 4/25/07, kasper salonen <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > the tragedy in this is beautifully, lightly, subtly masked. everything > points towards lightness: the title, the lines "candleless / for we > are not religious" (which I found funny because it implies that the > tradition of having candles on a cake is made out to be religious), > the image & consonance of "in the garden gaudy...", the clarity & > williams-like freshness of "the sea breathes / a weight of silver"... > the only part that actually hints at remembrance of death is the final > stanza, which also stands apart nicely because of the longer lines; > but even there, due to the rich metaphorical language of the poem > prior to this part, the 'shawl' & the 'bones' are not automatically > literal. > > even the lack of punctuation is done seamlessly, & it adds to a > nagging foreshadowing of the blank immediacy of death. > besides which, the imagery of this is great. branches, bees, sea wind, > flowers, bones. outstanding work. > > KS > > On 19/04/07, Cindy Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Your forty seventh April > > candleless > > for we are not religious > > > > in the garden gaudy > > branches float > > with early bees > > > > the sea breathes > > a weight of silver > > there is no horizon > > > > in three days the flowers > > will fall three times > > since your last April > > > > and we will sow a pale petal shawl > > to warm your bones as they drag and furl > > beneath the ice bright water > > > > Cindy - very rough, and any comments delightedly received! > > > -- My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/ "Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious." Oscar Wilde