“What is a catachresis?” I said. [...] “It’s a metaphor that’s become part of common everyday speech and is no longer perceived as a metaphor. For example: needle’s eye, bottleneck. And an Archilochian?”

“Tell us what an epicede is,” said Belano without turning around. “It’s an elegy, recited in the presence of the dead,” I said. “Not to be confused with the threnody. The epicede took the form of a choral dialogue. The meter used was the dactylo-epitrite, and later elegiac verse.”

I don’t know whether today is February 2nd or 3rd. It might be the 4th, or even the 5th or 6th. But it’s all the same to me. This is our threnody.