The Tarot Card Called Quim (Quim (reprise))

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
In the books, the deck is fixed.
Seventy-eight doors.
I have seen the Visconti-Sforza cards, painted in 1450.
The Fool begins his walk.
The Empress holds her world.
The Tower falls in fire.
I have looked through them all, one by one.
There is no card for this.

[Verse 2]
The word we found in Chaucer, do you remember?
It felt like a secret kept too long.
A sound from a different earth.
Bouba said it was a place.
A valley.
A beginning.
A word that had no picture in the book.

[Chorus]
So we make one tonight.
Card number twenty-three.
The one after The World.
On this stiff, yellowed parchment.
With the good india ink that smells of smoke.
We draw The Tarot Card Called Quim.

[Verse 3]
It is not The Lovers, which is a choice between two paths.
It is not Strength, which is a hand on a lion's mouth.
It's not even from Fanny Hill, 1748, though John Cleland wrote it plainly.
Our card is a gateway.
A dark water.
The source of the river.
Bouba gives her a crown of river-reeds.
I write the name below, very carefully.

[Bridge]
Pemba found it on the bench this morning.
He picked it up, held it to the window light.
I thought there would be a lecture.
Instead, he smiled.
Just a quiet laugh, deep in his chest.
A sound like turning a page.

[Outro]
He put it on the high shelf, beside the fossil fish.
He did not throw it away.
Our own Major Arcana.
A secret we made true.
Now it exists.