Thirty years ago, a boy and a girl
Put their No’s to the grindstone, their Yes to the world.
Thirty years ago, two lovers’ true minds
Got some grit in their oyster and started a pearl.
Thirty long years with ‘the right bloody woman’
Hatching a love-shelled and rock steady girl.
Thirty years gone, two half-hearts gambled
A whole heart for love and lost a half-world.
Glimpsed through that dazzle of church wedding glass,
Seen face to face now - the sun’s winter pearl.
Dec 1 2009
My Uncle Riley famously greeted his sixtieth wedding anniversary with 'Aye, sixty years with the wrong bloody woman.' I do not envy him his marriage but I do envy his laconic power.
Intertextual note: I read Shakespeare's sonnet 'Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True (Two?) Minds/ Admit Impediments' at our wedding reception and meant it.
My playout features Shelley's rendering the Corinthian spirit of (formerly Saul and later St) Paul as sourced via the Stones's greatest hits LP 'Through The Past Darkly'. (1969) Even the devil (now Sir) Jagger knew his Bible in those days.
