Epithalamium and Shivaree
By Marilyn Nelson

All Cana was abuzz next day with stories:
Some said it had a sad aftertaste; some said
its sweetness make them ache with thirst.
Years later those who had been there
spoke of it with closed eyes, and swayed
like the last slow-dance of the prom.
The village children poked each other's ribs
when they reeled past, still drunk at eighty.

Lovers know what that drunkenness is:
It makes a festive sacrament of praise
for the One who loans us each other
and this too-brief time.
One sip of the wine of Cana
and lovers become fools. And fools lovers.

The willows are drunk tralala; they shimmy
in the silly wind of Spring,

Lovers sing noisily. With a little pink parasol
a lover pedals out to the halfway point on the wire.
Below, a silver thread of river. She waves, blows kisses,
wavers and oops,
her unicycle disappears into mystery.
Her face mimes our gasp.
We hear an unseen, slide-whistle chorus.
She sings: Tralala, the willows are drunk;

they shimmy in the silly April wind.
And I'm just a kitten in catnip, a pup
rollin' in some ambrosial doggie cologne.
Why settle for less than rapture?
Your pulse against my lips, your solitude
snoring next to mine. The wine we drink from each other.
She leaps. And now there are two of them out there,
jitterbugging on shimmering air.

Copyright © Marilyn Nelson. Reprinted from The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems by Marilyn Nelson, with the permission of the Louisiana State University Press.

Copyright © 1997-2007 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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