This dish requires pretacci, rotten priests,
a pasta made around the bay of Naples
and introduced by soldiers conquering Gaul.
Its shape resembles shells or prepuces
that open in the pot.

You need to make the sauce the day before –
with capers, anchovies and flat-leaved parsley.
Then add a pound of mussels, scrubbed and shucked,
but leave the little pubic beard – its salty
effluvium is crucial to the taste.

Reduce, and add the wild asparagus tips.
Be sure to serve on platters fired in caves
by orphans from the Benedictine abbey.
The dish is called pretaxi extasi
in early Occitan: rotten priest in ecstasy.

The night before a village ordination
the women cook it for the boys and men
and follow it with pette nonne: nuns’ farts,
a pastry like a madeleine.
They say the meal has aphrodisiac effects.