Lyrics

As soon as the elderly waiter placed before me the fish I had ordered, it began to stare up at me with its one flat, iridescent eye. I feel sorry for you., it seemed to say, eating alone in this awful restaurant bathed in such unkindly light and surrounded by these dreadful murals of Sicily. And I feel sorry for you, too— yanked from the sea and now lying dead next to some boiled potatoes in Pittsburgh— I said back to the fish as I raised my fork. And thus my dinner in an unfamiliar city with its rivers and lighted bridges was graced not only with chilled wine and lemon slices but with compassion and sorrow even after the waiter removed my plate with the head of the fish still staring and the barrel vault of its delicate bones terribly exposed, save for a shroud of parsley.