Sunshower
Down South, you say the devil is beating his wife.

In Hindi and Singhalese: the fox’s wedding.

Orphan’s tears, in Lithuanian; in Arabic, the rats are getting married.

In the Philippines, a tikbalang’s wedding: the demon horse taking him a mate.

In Finnish, a wedding in hell; in Polish, the witches are making butter.

Sun shining, rain falling: quick, what do you say?

In Zulu, monkey’s wedding; in Afrikkans, jackal is marrying wolf’s wife.

In Rio, snail’s wedding day: all slick and silvery, a slither of rainbow above the favelas.

Ghost rain, in Hawaiian; in Armenian, the wolf is giving birth on the mountain.

Bright sun, hard rain: the devil’s at it again, whaling away on his trouble and strife.

A fun-fair in hell, if you speak Dutch; in Tamil, fox and raven getting hitched.

In Catalan, a little saying: it rains, it shines, the witches comb their hair.

In Cajun Country, you can go further: the devil is beating his wife and marrying his daughter.

Sun-drenched, soaked through, squinting, dripping: speak now or forever bite your tongue.

Naked rain, in Gujarati; on the flood-plains of the Punjab, the one-eyed jackal’s lucky day.

In Galician, an impish variation: the devil is beating the women with knives and spoons.

In Dakar, someone hears a cabbie say: “Rain and sun, hyena’s baby about to die.”

Sunny, rainy, wicked cool, passing strange: a touch of water-witchery, a whiff of sulpher.

Devil’s wedding, in Bengali; in Bulgarian, bear’s kissing his new bride.

In Portuguese, you get to choose: rain and sun, snail’s wedding; sun and rain, widow’s marrying again.

In Kurosawa’s Dreams, a scene called “Sunlight Through the Rain”—a wedding-party of fox-spirits
      in slow drum-beat procession through the woods, spied on by a boy.

Sun’s out, but the wind shifts, and now it’s coming down: you’re hot, you’re wet, you can’t say when
       you last saw the wolves and tigers taking vows.

Dearly bedeviled, we are gobsmacked here today in this pelting sunshine, this blazing downpour—

Do you take this hellrake, this wild child, this monkey’s uncle, this demon lover, this foxy sweet-talker,
      in heatstroke and in cloudburst till inferno or derecho do you part?

Printer’s devil, this one’s for you: somewhere, somehow, sunlit rainfall for a spell, and someone looking
       up and saying what anyone in these parts might say.
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