Singing, today I married my white girl beautiful in a barley field.
Green on thy finger a grass blade curled, so with this ring I thee wed, I thee wed, and send our love to the loveless world of all the living and all the dead.

Now, no more than vulnerable human, we, more than one, less than two,
are nearly ourselves in a barley field- and only love is the rent that’s due
though the bailiffs of time return anew to all the living but not the dead.

Shipwrecked, the sun sinks down harbours of a sky, unloads its liquid cargoes of marigolds,
and I and my white girl lie still in the barley-who else wishes to speak,
what more can be said by all the living against all the dead?

Come then all you wedding guests: green ghost of trees, gold of barley,
you blackbird priests in the field, you wind that shakes the pansy head
fluttering on a stalk like a butterfly; come the living and come the dead.

Listen flowers, birds, winds, worlds, tell all today that I married
more than a white girl in the barky- for today I took to my human bed flower
and bird and wind and world, and all the living and all die dead.



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