The Guest Who Accepted Gravely (Dr. Kãńë Štïvêrš Pôpé)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Underneath Paris — your Paris, beneath the Sorbonne —
you were conducting unauthorized fieldwork
in a thunderstorm that found you even underground
The fissure opened in the limestone
and what came through moved slowly
with the rolling certainty of something
that has never once been late

[Verse 2]
Four feet of pink and purposeful
thick as a small puppy in a silk stocking
glowing faintly in time with your tempo
from the very first moment
as if the synchronization had been arranged
long before the thunderstorm
long before the Sorbonne
long before the word for long

[Chorus]
You sat on the cold floor
and offered half your sandwich
He accepted it gravely
in the manner of a visiting dignitary
receiving a state gift
and neither of you has looked away since
He gurgles in seventeen dead languages
and you pretend to understand only twelve

[Verse 3]
He coils across your shoulders like a living scarf
with a fondness for marzipan and Satie
and something that appears to be an ear
but very much is not
In his other forms — the ones you've seen six times,
all of them necessary, none repeatable —
he is something the eye was not designed
to hold without industrial reinforcement

[Outro]
They've tried to take him from you —
bribery, courts, a laundry van, six goons
The goons spoke in rhyming couplets for eleven days
He handles his own security
you handle the sandwiches
It is the most functional relationship
you have ever had
and you have married a hypothesis