The Stylish Indifference (Pococurante)

Lyrics

[Intro]

Ah, listen here, lads. Voltaire knew a chap, name of Pococurante. Italian for not givin' a toss. From Candide, that book what skewered the lot of 'em. Chapter 25, mark it.

[Verse 1]
In his palace by the canal, Senator Pococurante sits with his bound volumes.
Homer's Iliad, leather spine cracked from one readin' in 1742.
He yawns at the epic, says the gods bore him stiff.
Milton's Paradise Lost, printed London 1667, gathers dust on the oak shelf.
Too much paradise, not enough lost, he mutters to the empty hall.
Two Raphaels hang there, Sanzio's brush from 1509, The School of Athens.
But Pococurante shrugs, calls 'em overrated scribbles.
The marble floor echoes his steps, cool underfoot like the November damp.

[Chorus]
Pococurante, poco curante, carin' little for the lot.
Quotes the Italian, I do, from Voltaire's page.
Indifferent to the masterpieces, the mistresses chatterin' at supper.
On May 30, 1778, Voltaire kicked off, but his senator lives on.
Stylish boredom in a velvet chair, canal water lappin' outside.


[Verse 2]
The library smells of old parchment and salt from the lagoon.
Golden quill pen on the desk, inkwell dry since last Tuesday.
He flips through Horace, edition from Paris 1723, finds the odes tedious.
Almond biscotti on a silver platter, untouched since noon.
Gondola sways at the mooring post, black wood from the Arsenale yard.
Pococurante glances out, sees the Rialto Bridge in the fog.
François-Marie Arouet, that's Voltaire's real name, born November 21, 1694.
Wrote him as a warning, I reckon, against fancy apathy.

[Bridge]
But here's the rub, in Candide's tale, he gripes about the women most.
Their prattle over veal at dinner, worse than any Homer hexameter.
Servants unnamed, mistresses faceless, all part of the grand indifference.
What made him so? Trade in silks? Lost love in 1745?
Voltaire leaves it blank, like the white space on his map of Venice.


[Outro]
Pococurante, echoin' through the ages.
From Voltaire's quill to my Yorkshire tongue.
Stylish indifference, aye, but don't let it take ye.