Wedding Poems: 30 Not At All Cheesy Ideas For Your Ceremony

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Variation on the Word Sleep, by Margaret Atwood – The Privileged Lovers, by Rumi – Chemistry, by Nayyirah Waheed – Touched by an Angel, by Maya Angelou – Defeated by Love, by Rumi – Desire, by Alice Walker – The Day Sky, by Hafiz – Children Running Through, by Rumi – I Got Kin, by Hafiz – The Wedding Vow, by Sharon Olds – [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in], by e.e. cummings

OUR FAVORITE WEDDING CEREMONY POEMS

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Every Day You Play…, by Pablo Neruda – The Ache of Marriage, by Denise Levertov – A Great Need, by Hafiz – We, by Nayyirah Waheed – love is a place, by e.e. cummings – So Much Happiness, by Naomi Shihab Nye – somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond, by e.e. cummings – It’s all I have to bring today (26), by Emily Dickinson – Having a Coke with You, by Frank O’Hara

OUR FAVORITE WEDDING CEREMONY POEMS

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[untitled], by Mindy Nettifee – Peanut Butter, by Eileen Myles – Habitation, by Margaret Atwood – This Marriage, by Rumi – Witch-Wife, by Edna St. Vincent Millay – Admonitions To A Special Person, by Anne Sexton – About Marriage, by Denise Levertov – The Invitation, by Oriah – Married Love, by Kuan Tao-sheng – A Blessing for Wedding, by Jane Hirshfield

OUR FAVORITE WEDDING CEREMONY POEMS

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I would like to watch you sleeping. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons

1. “VARIATION ON THE WORD SLEEP”  BY MARGARET ATWOOD

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towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center. I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame

1. “VARIATION ON THE WORD SLEEP”  BY MARGARET ATWOOD

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in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.

1. “VARIATION ON THE WORD SLEEP”  BY MARGARET ATWOOD

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The moon has become a dancer at this festival of love. This dance of light, This sacred blessing, This divine love, beckons us to a world beyond only lovers can see with their eyes of fiery passion. They are the chosen ones who have surrendered. Once they were particles of light now they are the radiant sun.

2. “THE PRIVILEGED LOVERS”  BY: RUMI

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They have left behind the world of deceitful games. They are the privileged lovers who create a new world with their eyes of fiery passion.

2. “THE PRIVILEGED LOVERS”  BY: RUMI

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chemistry is you touching my arm and it setting fire to my mind. —flood

3. “CHEMISTRY”  BY: NAYYIRAH WAHEED

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We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.

4. “TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL”  BY: MAYA ANGELOU

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We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

4. “TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL”  BY: MAYA ANGELOU

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The sky was lit by the splendor of the moon So powerful I fell to the ground Your love has made me sure I am ready to forsake this worldly life and surrender to the magnificence of your Being

5. “DEFEATED BY LOVE”  BY: RUMI

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My desire is always the same; wherever Life deposits me: I want to stick my toe & soon my whole body into the water. I want to shake out a fat broom & sweep dried leaves bruised blossoms dead insects & dust. I want to grow something.

6. “DESIRE”BY: ALICE WALKER

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It seems impossible that desire can sometimes transform into devotion; but this has happened. And that is how I’ve survived: how the hole I carefully tended in the garden of my heart grew a heart to fill it.

6. “DESIRE”BY: ALICE WALKER

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Let us be like Two falling stars in the day sky. Let no one know of our sublime beauty As we hold hands with God And burn Into a sacred existence that defies— That surpasses Every description of ecstasy And love.

7. “THE DAY SKY”BY: HAFIZ

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I used to be shy. You made me sing. I used to refuse things at table. Now I shout for more wine. In somber dignity, I used to sit on my mat and pray. Now children run through and make faces at me.

8. “CHILDREN RUNNING THROUGH”BY: RUMI, TRANSLATION BY: COLEMAN BARKS WITH JOHN MOYNE

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Plant So that your own heart Will grow. Love So God will think, “Ahhhhhh, I got kin in that body! I should start inviting that soul over For coffee and Rolls.”

9. “I GOT KIN”BY: HAFIZ

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Sing Because this is a food Our starving world Needs. Laugh Because that is the purest Sound.

9. “I GOT KIN”BY: HAFIZ

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I did not stand at the altar, I stood at the foot of the chancel steps, with my beloved, and the minister stood on the top step holding the open Bible. The church was wood, painted ivory inside, no people—God’s stable perfectly cleaned. It was night, spring—outside, a moat of mud, and inside, from the rafters, flies fell onto the open Bible, and the minister tilted it and brushed them off. 

10. “THE WEDDING VOW”BY: SHARON OLDS

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We stood beside each other, crying slightly with fear and awe. In truth, we had married that first night, in bed, we had been married by our bodies, but now we stood in history—what our bodies had said, mouth to mouth, we now said publicly, gathered together, death. We stood holding each other by the hand, yet I also

10. “THE WEDDING VOW”BY: SHARON OLDS

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stood as if alone, for a moment, just before the vow, though taken years before, took. It was a vow of the present and the future, and yet I felt it to have some touch on the distant past or the distant past on it, I felt the silent, dry, crying ghost of my parents’ marriage there, somewhere in the bright space—perhaps one of the plummeting flies, bouncing slightly

10. “THE WEDDING VOW”BY: SHARON OLDS

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as it hit forsaking all others, then was brushed away. I felt as if I had come to claim a promise—the sweetness I’d inferred from their sourness; and at the same time that I had come, congenitally unworthy, to beg. And yet, I had been working toward this hour all my life. And then it was time to speak—he was offering me, no matter what, his life. That is all I had to do, that evening, to accept the gift

10. “THE WEDDING VOW”BY: SHARON OLDS

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I had longed for—to say I had accepted it, as if being asked if I breathe. Do I take? I do. I take as he takes—we have been practicing this. Do you bear this pleasure? I do.

10. “THE WEDDING VOW”BY: SHARON OLDS

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i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart) I am never without it(anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet) I want no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

11. “[I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME(I CARRY IT IN]”BY: E.E. CUMMINGS

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here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

11. “[I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME(I CARRY IT IN]”BY: E.E. CUMMINGS

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Every day you play with the light of the universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water. You are more than this white head that I hold tightly as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands. You are like nobody since I love you. Let me spread you out among yellow garlands. Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?

12. “EVERY DAY YOU PLAY…”BY: PABLO NERUDA

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Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed. Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window. The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them. The rain takes off her clothes. The birds go by, fleeing. The wind. The wind. I can contend only against the power of men.

12. “EVERY DAY YOU PLAY…”BY: PABLO NERUDA

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The storm whirls dark leaves and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky. You are here. Oh, you do not run away. You will answer me to the last cry. Cling to me as though you were frightened. Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

12. “EVERY DAY YOU PLAY…”BY: PABLO NERUDA

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Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle, and even your breasts smell of it. While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth. How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.

12. “EVERY DAY YOU PLAY…”BY: PABLO NERUDA

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So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans. My words rained over you, stroking you. A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body. I go so far as to think that you own the universe.

12. “EVERY DAY YOU PLAY…”BY: PABLO NERUDA

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I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

12. “EVERY DAY YOU PLAY…”BY: PABLO NERUDA

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The ache of marriage: thigh and tongue, beloved, are heavy with it, it throbs in the teeth We look for communion and are turned away, beloved, each and each It is leviathan and we in its belly looking for joy, some joy not to be known outside it two by two in the ark of the ache of it.

13. “THE ACHE OF MARRIAGE”BY: DENISE LEVERTOV

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Out Of a great need We are all holding hands And climbing. Not loving is a letting go. Listen, The terrain around here Is Far too Dangerous For That.

14. “A GREAT NEED”BY: HAFIZ

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we return to each other in waves. this is how water loves.

15. “WE”  BY: NAYYIRAH WAHEED

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love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds

16. “LOVE IS A PLACE”BY: E.E. CUMMINGS

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It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth. When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change. But happiness floats. It doesn’t need you to hold it down. It doesn’t need anything.

17. “SO MUCH HAPPINESS”BY: NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

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Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to. You are happy either way. Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house and now live over a quarry of noise and dust cannot make you unhappy. Everything has a life of its own, it too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and ripe peaches, and love even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens and scratched records…..

17. “SO MUCH HAPPINESS”BY: NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

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Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible. You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.

17. “SO MUCH HAPPINESS”BY: NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

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somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

18. “SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED, GLADLY BEYOND”BY: E.E. CUMMINGS

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or if your wish be to close me, I and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing

18. “SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED, GLADLY BEYOND”BY: E.E. CUMMINGS

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(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

18. “SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED, GLADLY BEYOND”BY: E.E. CUMMINGS

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It’s all I have to bring today— This, and my heart beside— This, and my heart, and all the fields— And all the meadows wide— Be sure you count—should I forget Some one the sum could tell— This, and my heart, and all the Bees Which in the Clover dwell.

19. “IT’S ALL I HAVE TO BRING TODAY (26)”  BY: EMILY DICKINSON

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is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

20. “HAVING A COKE WITH YOU”BY: FRANK O’HARA

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it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

20. “HAVING A COKE WITH YOU”BY: FRANK O’HARA

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you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism

20. “HAVING A COKE WITH YOU”BY: FRANK O’HARA

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just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully as the horse

20. “HAVING A COKE WITH YOU”BY: FRANK O’HARA

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it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

20. “HAVING A COKE WITH YOU”BY: FRANK O’HARA

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if a man is only as good as his word, then I want to marry a man with a vocabulary like yours. the way you say “dicey” and “delectable” and “octogenarian” in the same sentence— that really turns me on, the way you describe the oranges in your backyard using “anarchistic” and “intimate” in the same breath.

21. [UNTITLED]  BY: MINDY NETTIFEE

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i would follow the legato and staccato of your tongue wrapping around your diction until listening become more like dreaming and dreaming became more like kissing you. i want to jump off the cliff of your voice into the suicide of your stream of consciousness. i want to visit the place in your heart where the wrong words die. i want to map it out with a dictionary and points of brilliant light

21. [UNTITLED]  BY: MINDY NETTIFEE

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until it looks more like a star chart than a strategy for communication. i want to see where your words are born. i want to find a pattern in the astrology. i want to memorize the scripts of your seductions. i want to live in the long-winded epics of your disappointments, in the haiku of your epiphanies. i want to know all the names you’ve given your desires. i want to find my name among them,

21. [UNTITLED]  BY: MINDY NETTIFEE

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‘cause there is nothing more wrecking-sexy than the right word. i want to thank whoever told you there was no such thing as a synonym. i want to throw a party for the heartbreak that turned you into a poet. and if it is true that a man is only as good as his word then, sweet jesus, let me be there the first time you are speechless,

21. [UNTITLED]  BY: MINDY NETTIFEE

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and all your explosive wisdom becomes a burning ball of sun in your throat, and all you can bring yourself to utter is, oh god, oh god….

21. [UNTITLED]  BY: MINDY NETTIFEE

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I am always hungry & wanting to have sex. This is a fact. If you get right down to it the new unprocessed peanut butter is no damn good & you should buy it in a jar as always in the largest supermarket you know. And I am an enemy of change, as you know. All

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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the things I embrace as new are in fact old things, re-released: swimming, the sensation of being dirty in body and mind summer as a time to do nothing and make no money. Prayer

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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as a last re- sort. Pleasure as a means, and then a means again with no ends in sight. I am absolutely in opposition to all kinds of goals. I have no desire to know where this, anything is getting me.

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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When the water boils I get a cup of tea. Accidentally I read all the works of Proust. It was summer I was there so was he. I write because I would like to be used for years after my death. Not

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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only my body will be compost but the thoughts I left during my life. During my life I was a woman with hazel eyes. Out the window is a crooked silo. Parts of your body I think of as stripes which I have learned to love along. We

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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swim naked in ponds & I write be- hind your back. My thoughts about you are not exactly forbidden, but exalted because they are useless, not intended to get you because I have you & you love me. It’s more

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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like a playground where I play with my reflection of you until you come back and into the real you I get to sink my teeth. With you I know how to relax. & so I work behind your back. Which

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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is lovely. Nature is out of control you tell me & that’s what’s so good about it. I’m immoderately in love with you, knocked out by all your new white hair why shouldn’t something I have always known be the

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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very best there is. I love you from my childhood, starting back there when one day was just like the rest, random growth and breezes, constant love, a sand- wich in the middle of day,

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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a tiny step in the vastly conventional path of the Sun. I squint. I wink. I take the ride.

22. “PEANUT BUTTER”BY: EILEEN MYLES

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Marriage is not a house, or even a tent it is before that, and colder: the edge of the forest, the edge of the desert the unpainted stairs at the back, where we squat outdoors, eating popcorn where painfully and with wonder at having survived this far

23. “HABITATION”BY: MARGARET ATWOOD

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we are learning to make fire

23. “HABITATION”BY: MARGARET ATWOOD

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May these vows and this marriage be blessed. May it be sweet milk, this marriage, like wine and halvah. May this marriage offer fruit and shade like the date palm. May this marriage be full of laughter, our every day a day in paradise. May this marriage be a sign of compassion, a seal of happiness here and hereafter.

24. “THIS MARRIAGE”BY: RUMI

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May this marriage have a fair face and a good name, an omen as welcomes the moon in a clear blue sky. I am out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this marriage.

24. “THIS MARRIAGE”BY: RUMI

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She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of coloured beads, Or steps leading into the sea.

25. “WITCH-WIFE”BY: EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

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She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.

25. “WITCH-WIFE”BY: EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

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Watch out for power, for its avalanche can bury you, snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain. Watch out for hate, it can open its mouth and you’ll fling yourself out to eat off your leg, an instant leper. Watch out for friends, because when you betray them, as you will,

26. “ADMONITIONS TO A SPECIAL PERSON”BY: ANNE SEXTON

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they will bury their heads in the toilet and flush themselves away. Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth. Watch out for games, the actor’s part, the speech planned, known, given,

26. “ADMONITIONS TO A SPECIAL PERSON”BY: ANNE SEXTON

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for they will give you away and you will stand like a naked little boy, pissing on your own child-bed. Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes) , it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won’t be heard and none of your running will end. Love? Be it man. Be it woman. It must be a wave you want to glide in on, give your body to it, give your laugh to it,

26. “ADMONITIONS TO A SPECIAL PERSON”BY: ANNE SEXTON

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give, when the gravelly sand takes you, your tears to the land. To love another is something like prayer and can’t be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. Special person, if I were you I’d pay no attention to admonitions from me, made somewhat out of your words and somewhat out of mine.

26. “ADMONITIONS TO A SPECIAL PERSON”BY: ANNE SEXTON

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A collaboration. I do not believe a word I have said, except some, except I think of you like a young tree with pasted-on leaves and know you’ll root and the real green thing will come. Let go. Let go. Oh special person, possible leaves, this typewriter likes you on the way to them, but wants to break crystal glasses

26. “ADMONITIONS TO A SPECIAL PERSON”BY: ANNE SEXTON

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in celebration, for you, when the dark crust is thrown off and you float all around like a happened balloon.

26. “ADMONITIONS TO A SPECIAL PERSON”BY: ANNE SEXTON

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Don’t lock me in wedlock, I want marriage, an encounter— I told you about the green light of May (a veil of quiet befallen the downtown park, late Saturday after noon, long shadows and cool

27. “ABOUT MARRIAGE”BY: DENISE LEVERTOV

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air, scent of new grass, fresh leaves, blossom on the threshold of abundance— and the birds I met there, birds of passage breaking their journey, three birds each of a different species: the azalea-breasted with round poll, dark, the brindled, merry, mousegliding one,

27. “ABOUT MARRIAGE”BY: DENISE LEVERTOV

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and the smallest, golden as gorse and wearing a black Venetian mask and with them the three douce hen-birds feathered in tender, lively brown— I stood a half-hour under the enchantment, no-one passed near, the birds saw me and

27. “ABOUT MARRIAGE”BY: DENISE LEVERTOV

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let me be near them.) It’s not irrelevant: I would be met and meet you so, in a green airy space, not locked in.

27. “ABOUT MARRIAGE”BY: DENISE LEVERTOV

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It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive.

28.“THE INVITATION”BY: ORIAH

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It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it

28.“THE INVITATION”BY: ORIAH

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or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

28.“THE INVITATION”BY: ORIAH

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I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

28.“THE INVITATION”BY: ORIAH

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I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.” It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone

28.“THE INVITATION”BY: ORIAH

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I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom

28.“THE INVITATION”BY: ORIAH

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you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

28.“THE INVITATION”BY: ORIAH

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You and I Have so much love, That it Burns like a fire, In which we bake a lump of clay Molded into a figure of you And a figure of me. Then we take both of them, And break them into pieces, And mix the pieces with water, And mold again a figure of you, And a figure of me. I am in your clay. You are in my clay. In life we share a single quilt. In death we will share one bed.

29. “MARRIED LOVE”BY: KUAN TAO-SHENG, TRANSLATED BY KENNETH REXROTH AND LING CHUNG

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Today when persimmons ripen Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song Today when the maple sets down its red leaves Today when windows keep their promise to open Today when fire keeps its promise to warm Today when someone you love has died or someone you never met has died

30. “A BLESSING FOR WEDDING”BY: JANE HIRSHFIELD

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Today when someone you love has been born or someone you will not meet has been born Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace Today, let this light bless you With these friends let it bless you With snow-scent and lavender bless you

30. “A BLESSING FOR WEDDING”BY: JANE HIRSHFIELD

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Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days

30. “A BLESSING FOR WEDDING”BY: JANE HIRSHFIELD

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