“An oak tree stands beside a linden in the Phrygian hills” . Ovid/Metamorphoses
Coming into this room, he thought
“I am very much like a god to them”, and
he wondered whimsically if he ought
to change the milk in the pitcher
into something not startling or grand
but subtly different, with a little, perhaps,
more class; so he thought of adding
cream until it was like half & half.
He could imagine their faces, could hardly
keep himself from grinning unreservedly
at the sight of it: So they sit,
with the look of clowns,
mouths all rimmed in froth and white, looking first
at each other and then at him, speaking
(sub voce) in the dialect of the hills,
“O crap! Not another one of them!
Now what’s he gonna do?”