For your wedding, on your wedding -- poem from Tita Luisa

Epithalamium

And so we have come, from half-way
around the world to this city
ringed by ancient walls looking out

over water, to make a promise
to all that persists-- Lush as the leaves
that push past the rubble of old wars;

brave as the lyrics of heroes
in the aftermath of their own passing;
impossibly, as the city remakes itself again

and the flood recedes... Here, we'll enter
the drift of time with arms entwined;
we'll pledge the small, domestic act

of loving one another--
All that history requires, after all,
to lift itself anew into the future.



Luisa A. Igloria
10 November 2009