* Richard Bronson’s collection of poetry Silent music is published byPadishah Press (New York, 2009). This poem is reproduced with permission.

You lit a candle at Chartres,
a prayer from one mother to another
and placed it with the hundred others,
white wax in red glass,
a light burning in the deeps of this Earthly palace
which men of all stations had labored to build
for the Queen of Heaven.

Neither of us believers
in the faith that told of God incarnate
born of a woman to rescue all men from Death —
yet in this ancient place,
in the quiet shadows of its holiness,
you felt the need
to say your fervent prayer for the world.