In the stilted domain of a faculty gathering,
they discreetly devour one another,
savoring their seasoned conversation.
Never married, forever committed
to their parallel university lives,
they sip the wine of intellectual banter,
as worlds of ideas pass between them.
Connoisseurs of reason, they sigh
facing one another as they taste
the delicate pastries of certain fact
and theoretical conjecture.
Opinions are sliced against the grain.
With more wine, comes less worry.
The room around them fades.
Their usually formal voices rise
in the immodest mirth of two Merlins
divining wisdom from a single pool,
their thirst for each other
second only to their hunger
for the magic of thirty more years
of shared academic devotion.
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