He shattered the quiet of many nights, when the lamplight of the cobbled streets below cast strange shadows on the walls, and the stars fled.
"Why do we laugh?"
A question posed to me. A rarity.
"Are we equals?" I asked him.
"In some ways. Perhaps."
"And equals share of what they have, yes?"
"Yes," said he. "They ought."
"When stripped of all, what does a man have?"
"Grief. Love. Joy," he answered. "Death."
"Perhaps," I theorized, "laughter is an embodiment of all these things."
There was silence. Dusty silence.
"Then laughter is poetry, too," he said, and was quiet for a long spell afterwards.