Sharon Olds - The Elopement lyrics

It was raining upwards, sideways, each tree bursting with rain like brilliant sweat. We stopped at a country store to ask where we could get married. There were vats of pickles, barrels of square yellow crackers, the Prop. gave us the local J. P.'s number. It was gently misting, in there, brine and cracker-salt. The J. P. asked if we'd get married in his church. While he called his minister I wandered, in the dark, store air, past the columns of vertebrate tin. The shelves, and floor, and counters were old wood, there must have been mice in the building, rats, a cat, roaches, beetles, and, in the barrel, whatever makes water pickle, the mother of vinegar, it was a spore Eden, a bestiary, the minister said Yes, come right on over, but maybe we had been married, there, by matter, by the pickles, by the crackers, by the balls of guard-fur, the rats looking away into the long reaches, like the cows in the manger, by the crèche, though there's always one who widens her glowing eyes, and gazes – one rat, transfixed by mortal coupling grabbed the Dutch Girl cocoa tin in his arms and spun her in a dervish mazurka, then all the witnesses waltzed, the Campbell's-soup twins, the Gerber baby, Aunt Jemima, Betty Crocker, the Sun Maid raisin girl, the oats Quaker, the chef of Cream of Wheat, every good, mild, family guest danced at our marriage, cloudy ions in the cucumber-barrel spiraled, our eggs and s**m swam, in tandem, in water- ballet, the spores of the sky whirled and kissed on our wedding day.