When I asked my father’s business friend
On my twentieth birthday to recommend
A place in Paris Mom and I could go,
He said Panurge’s Sheep “for ze food and show.”
The name, I knew from reading Rabelais,
Meant to follow blindly, but we went anyway.
Displayed on walls and menus was risqué art
That featured enormous organs—not one a heart.
The sheep came over to sniff our private parts,
And everything we tasted from soup to tarts,
Like the engorged baguette over two round buns,
With anyone else would’ve been explicit and fun.
But the worst of all came from a room nearby:
Whispers of “oui, mon chéri” and mounting sighs.
We never mentioned it to one another.
Nor the similarity of mother and smother.