Conversation Galante

I observe: “Our sentimental friend the moon!

Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)

It may be Prester John’s balloon

Or an old battered lantern hung aloft

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To light poor travellers to their distress.”

She then: “How you digress!”

And I then: “Some one frames upon the keys

That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain

The night and moonshine; music which we seize

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To body forth our own vacuity.”

She then: “Does this refer to me?”

“Oh no, it is I who am inane.”

“You, madam, are the eternal humorist,

The eternal enemy of the absolute,

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Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!

With your aid indifferent and imperious

At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—”

And—“Are we then so serious?”

—
T.S. Eliot

Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917