merovingian

Late last night, I went down to Porlock and knocked on the man's door angrily. He came out to the door in a bathrobe and fuzzy rabbit slippers.

"What?" he said, rubbing his eyes.

"I want the rest of Kubla Khan," I said.

"No," he said, "I don't have it."

"You do too," I said, "You interrupted Coleridge on your dumb business and distracted him from his opium-filled visions and he forgot his poem. By the Law of Conservation of Beauty, the poem must have gone somewhere, and you're the most obvious suspect. So pony up, person from Porlock. I want the rest of Kubla Khan! Now!"

"First of all," he said, "that was over two hundred years ago, so I'm most certainly dead by now. Second, if I could give it away, don't you think I already would have done? Third, you don't even know where Porlock is. Last and most important, there is no Law of Conservation of Beauty. Beauty is limitless, and it is created and destroyed all the time."

I didn't go all the way to Porlock to get a reasonable deferral, or to have my irrational expectations go unmet!