Come visit me alone, for one’s enough
that any quorum lacks to vote defeat.
Come visit me in Cadaqués. We’ll hide
out basking on the baking rocks and poach
sweet views of pulchritude.
                           The octopus,
as sturdy as a horse except no bones,
inks out its living in the open sea,
and I eke mine on land.
                          It’s marginal,
my living, but, like me, sufficient here.

I catch up passing tourists with my song
and share with them their wine and daily bread.

Unlike the octopus’s prey, mine live
to warn the others, though they never do.
They boast instead they stole away my song.

They sing for years the tunes I have forgot.
I misspeak verbs in languages they learn

in later years, the better to esteem
the wisdom of the octopus we eight
or was it four flushed. Come visit me. We’ll hide.