Neither of us knew how crucial a day it would become

Neither of us knew how crucial a day
it would become in the history
of poetry. He was in a Paris
bistro sipping Moulin-à-Vent
with his mistress, waiting for the chef
—a Catalan he'd favored since '39—
to deliver on the promised mongetes amb
botifarra he'd yearned for all that lean day,

while I was in a courthouse in Boone,
North Carolina, staring at a poster
of three auto wrecks and the one word,
"Think!" in blazing red. The circuit judge
who'd just asked me, "Do you plight your troth?"
—seeing my befuddlement—saved the day:
"Just say yes, young fellow, and we can all
move on to what you've been waiting for."

[Philip Levine {1928-2015}, 'I was Married on the Fiftieth Birthday of Pablo Neruda', from The Last Shift]