that they in marriage made

From This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, by Wendell Berry

As a husband blessed with a patient and kind bride, I find this poem about marriage and a life together, a life come to an end, particularly moving, filled as it is with laudatory thoughts on Loyce and Owen.

This day is coming for us all, each husband and wife, our marriages.

How shall we then live, married?
How will our one-flesh existence be remembered?

---

IV

Now Loyce Flood is dead,
A stone is at her head,
The green sod over her,
The snow will cover her.
Owen lay in that place,
The commonwealth of peace,
Fifteen years to the day
Before she came to stay.
We left them there together,
Safe now from time and weather,
At rest as man and wife.
I thank them for the life
That they in marriage made,
Faithful and unafraid,
Frugal and bountiful.
May what was beautiful
In all they said and did
Or thought and left unsaid
Flow to them like a river
And comfort them forever.