Last Rites, by Adrian G R Scott

When I am gone,
take up your kitchen broom,
sweep three stars down
from the cobwebbed sky.

Place the first in my coffin;
its bleach-bright light
will suffuse my guttered flame,
waken life's soiled toil
to the tear-dried home,
prepared.

Place the second
in my tended garden,
where my gardener
will look for me,
where it all started.

Place the last on a chain
around your neck;
wear it as a sacrament
of the lights we kindled.

Then when the stars
tumble from the sky
at the end, our shining
will illuminate scars on
love's invincible face.

From The Call of the Unwritten, by Adrian G R Scott, available here.

A Marriage, by R S Thomas

We met
   under a shower
of bird-notes.
   Fifty years passed,
love's moment
   in a world in
servitude to time.
  She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
  closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
  'Come' said death,
choosing her as his
  partner for
the last dance. And she,
  who in life
had done everything
  with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
  for the shedding
of one sigh no
  heavier than a feather.