Richard the Lionheart

Lions starved for weeks, then let loose. Not with a bang, but with a whisper,

so as to not alert the sleeping princess above, whose heart bleeds

only metaphorically. No, you would not have survived

as Richard did. But you could learn Chinese. If you wanted to,

you could learn any language. Hebrew holds much wisdom

and does not guard it very closely, while German contains a counterintuitively vague

sense of the importance of each noun, capitalised and easy

to wind up around a foreign tongue. Obviously, for both you and Richard,

there is English: the perfect language for a noble thief insistent on pretending 

the only thing that ever really gets away from us is the weather. And yet,

Richard has made it easy for you to best him

in this. Most people don’t like to be stolen from, so they happily give

up all they don’t know they care about until they see its hind legs kick -

futile in his mouth, head turned towards the Nice old coast of France.

It’s a can-do attitude, all around us. Sauf qu’il

ne veut pas - peut pas, peut-être.