Where no one speaks to the king except through a flue,
where monks wipe their greasy mugs on their thighs,
where it’s permissible to slurp but not to chew,
where penances are meted out through covert spies,
where healers feign a laying on of eyes,
where household pets, not children, are the rightful heirs,
where feces are inspected to determine right,
where wrongdoers merely endure the stares
of sungazers who through gazing have lost their sight,
where throughout their lives they cut neither hair nor nails,
where mastiffs are interred without their tails,
where manservants devour the bodies of the slain,
where death is ambivalent – neither loss nor gain,
where pleasure is assessed through want of pain,
where the chaff sits firm upon the grain – that’s Montaigne.
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