They say the first one is invisible,
you only feel its heat. It’s shining
somewhere out in space — or is it
the womb — where love is a candle
in the dark, created by a spark of
something felt though never seen.
The next one, then, is number two
but we’ll call it one so that you can
light it again, a red candle perhaps
or a candy-twist pink. By this time
you grasp & grab at consciousness,
at these apparitions that re-appear,
regularly, and each time in greater
numbers: three, four, five candles.
The symmetry of six demands your
grudging respect, which is further
whet by number seven, or heaven.
Nine revolving bodies in a child’s
planetarium, then the ten’s maudlin
return to its beginning: a one & a
zero, together, on the same cake.
Compared to this, eleven’s a breeze.
By now, you’ve grasped the basic
terms of the deal: someone lights
the candles, then you just sit back,
pretending to count stars. Twelve
candles brings you a dozen roses
which you’re too young to blow out.
From thirteen onwards it’s all a blur.
The teenage candles, a soundtrack
featuring a style of music no one
over the age of eighteen even hears.
Nineteen’s similar to the invisible
one we touched on at the start, only
warmer, and full of beer. Twenty
brings us back to ten, which is to say
the decade, ready-made. By this stage
you view the whole candle thing with
unaffected disdain, although you still
protect your own like a bird its brood
every time what you know will come
comes around. To move on to candles
in their thirties is to document a series
of increasingly intelligent — no, brilliant
crusades against the lighting of those
candles which are yet to come. When
you think of lighting forty candles, by
yourself, in a dark room alone, a weird
kind of uneasiness comes over you.
Thenceforth, every year for at least a
decade, you light those candles with
the miniature flame thrower someone
once gave you as a present. For the
barbecue, you remember. The candles,
dipped in kerosene, sing in delight as
you make your big light-sabre sweep.
From sixty onwards you experience
what it’s like to be caught inside some
cheerful waxwork montage, sixty two
and three, especially, arousing your
long-forgotten enthusiasm for years
spent setting stuff on fire. Seventies?
Don’t speak of the seventies candles, you
don’t want to hear. The late seventies,
though — there’s a film, right there, in
seventy eight or seventy nine candles.
The golden glow of eighty candles, set
on fire, burning right through the night.
The triple zero birthday cake, a double
one next to another big zero. You alone
get it: the invisible candle, stage left,
wearing a hat that’s completely green.
The sixties montage reappears right at
the end of the eighty-ninth, spoiling an
otherwise flawless run of candle-lighting
ceremonies that someone should have
filmed, had the means to do so existed
at the time. Ninety and ninety one, to
their credit, proceed without a hitch.
Then you hit ninety two & you notice
that someone else lights the ghastly
things now, and you don’t even mind,
particularly. You review the wisdom of
this while sitting comfortably on ninety
seven, & the ninety eighth doesn’t hurt
a bit. You occupy your ninety ninth like
a remote eagle its eyrie, watching over
the abstract world two miles below you.
When you hit the big ignition switch that
will set in motion a slow-combustion of
one hundred mile-high candles you’re
already in heaven. The immensity of that
agricultural slog over mid-on seems so
easy that you’re lighting the next one as
we speak, dispatching the following three
with ease, spanking a radiant thrill of love
into each of those one hundred & four
candles, etching their flames into space
& then settling again on your still-warm
eyrie, to survey an earth parsecs below.
The candles, clearly, will not be denied
their eventual victory for much longer.
You, for your part, feel no fear. Softly,
all in one moment, you realise someone
has blown the hundred & fifth one out.
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