Letters that have been burning in your fires
Have caked the chimney black with passion spent,
And faded mantel-bricks with slight desires,
And made the flames leap red with discontent.
All valentines are grey when they are dust,
Gone thin with smoke, all addresses the same —
Fire you hold the only heat we trust
To burn away the traces of a name:
We all have singed a little in your flame.
This poem was originally included as one of two under the title “Two Poems” in the Spring 1947 edition of the student magazine Dimensions. Alison Kimball Bradford was the Delaware State Poet Laureate in 1961.