The azalea flames honor you,
With the chatter of wings, butterflies
Paired like sisters honor you.
Oak leaves quaver like telegrams
From the living and dead.
The day gathers shards of a ceremonial plate
To form a brilliant, white betrothal sun,
And the moon, with its slow gallop,
The tumbleweed stars —
In your honor the wedding-night sky resounds!

When like our ancestors we go forth to wander the earth,
When we fall the way they have fallen,
May the braided light that rises from the wedding canopy
Be there, a thousand miles or more from the temple,
To lift us.
If the rose of infidelity should blossom
Or a child be twisted from our care
By whatever wind would claim it,
If disease or boredom or despair
Should carve its name into our heart,
May the light repair the sky torn by our cry.

Take the hand of my loneliness.
Today let us leave behind bruised fruit.
Wear the antique dress and I will wear the robe
Which one day will be my shroud.
To a feast of the highest order, come,
To Jerusalem we will fly,
Not the city of goat light, city of scars,
But the capital that crowns the steep slope of the sea.

What light will come upon us then I cannot say,
Having been there only once, before birth.
Let us begin to build a life
Here, where the road ends
At a surge of mountain, lift and shine!