Votive Poem by Neil Young

Still candles, uniform in silent air,
Reach up, burn out their solemn hours in prayer;

Like soldiers in their stern unflinching flames,
Erect as spears.Wax melts to greasy clear,

Then running out, fades to a frail wick glow
Extinguished in a thin grey rising thread.

In turn each votive dies.Each prayer, once made,
Will gasp with desperate smoke into the night.

Like callers' voices trapped on answer phones,
There's little time to purge our fear, regret.

They light them to a God they can't appease.
I light one to a God I can't believe in.

My vain hope is that I am wrong.Am I?
What then, when all their energy is spent?

Light another? Light another? Light them all?
How much wax will melt before we know?