To Margaret

Our seventh year of turning together

Till death do us part:

It has only drawn us more together

In loving

And cherishing all things -

Finding joy together in everything

Even when there was none to be found.


A sharing of anxieties

So that they were almost our own.

One flesh, one mind, one soul

When it seemed all the forces of evil

United to assault our very being,

Our integrity,

Our conjugality.

 

Yet whom God hath joined together

He will not haply put asunder.

Though some would have delighted to see

Our suffering multiplied

In individuality.

We turn the seventh time

Together.

 

For worse we have known,

Now for the better.

We have felt the poverty of depression,

Now to the richness and fullness of living

With the cares of the past year behind,

To become that for which we were bound together

Upon our honour.

 

December 1971

On our wedding anniversary, eight months after the death of Alan John.