The Cyclist in the Apple Tree

Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, The Fall of Ixion (ca. 1588). Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

“Lucretius could not credit centaurs:

Such bicycle he deemed asynchronous.”

— William Empson, “Invitation to Juno.”

The yellow-bellied sapsucker

in the apple tree might conceivably

be me. AI’s oxymoronic science's*

relentless pecking fills the world.

Grab an umbrella, but keep it furled

—even rain now makes no sense!

The cyclist embedded in this wood

sought symbiosis, as he should, but

"Ixion rides upon a single wheel.”**

Seek an answer, cop a feel—

to countless nothings lately flew

the many arts that Tully knew.***

* Cf. Ignorance Unmasked: Essays in the New Science of Agnotology, ed. Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger (Stanford University Press, 2025).

 ** Empson, ibid. Ixion, king of the Lapiths, sought to seduce Hera (aka Juno), wife of Zeus, who, however, substituted a cloud for her. From that copulation the half-horse, half-human race of Centaurs was born. Ixion was condemned in punishment to be bound to an eternally spinning wheel of fire. The first-century BCE Roman poet-philosopher Lucretius questions this tale, inter alia, in his De rerum natura [On the Nature of Things].

 *** Marcus Tullius Cicero, De senectute [On Old Age], 78: “Tot artes tantæ scientiæ.”

Tueday, December 1, 2025

God's Hooks

The Iron Crown of Lombardy, traditionally believed to incorporate nails of the True Cross, "God's Hooks" —in the seventeenth-century English exclamation, "Gadzooks!"

All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.—Julian of Norwich (14th century)

The Office of the Dead's been said.

Sealed in her cell, Julian prays.

What with all the books I've read,

I pay their due to God's hooks,

which dissembles puzzled looks.

Stuck without a fair conclusion,

undeceived, and full of years,

I dream up crops of random fears.

“Certain, since impossible,” Tertullian*

taught (if not to someone, perhaps

for naught). Credo quia absurdum [est].

So to say, might that be best?

All manner of things may well be well.

And if they’re aren't, how could we tell?

* Who he? Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (ca. 155–220 CE), the North African Punic “father of Latin Christianity,” who supposedly said, "I believe because it is absurd."

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Satan Fakes a Bow

Maʿrūf Baghdādī, Angels paying obeisance to Adam, except Iblīs, who refuses. Topkapı Palace Museum, Istanbul, MS Bağdat 282 fol. 16r.

A More Perfect Union

The soul is like a stalactite,

Dripping down from heaven;

The body like a stalagmite,

Arising from the floor.

It takes an eternity to meet,

But then they want no more.

Effecting a more perfect union

Is what it's all about,

The kissing and the fucking,

The weeping and the knout.

Thanksgiving

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.

—Evelyn Waugh, Scoop

Too long ago to shake a stick at,

Short-faced bears huffed in caves,

Lunching on Hominini trapped

In limestone kelders, growing fat

On termites and the questing vole.

On early humans, Bruins feast

Each fall to prove their settlers' role,

All other claimants since deceased,

But moved by some foreboding fear,

They "pardon" two of them a year.

Waddle and Gobble, traditionally,

Their names, are deemed demeaning

By some, but virtue-signaling games

Do not burnish lexigraphic preening.

Names making hay of what they've got,

A new nomenclature's native form ought

To foresee the future, whether liked or not,

Say “Judas”? How about “Iscariot”?

The pardoned Hominini, thus identified,

Inventing Arts and Science, multiplied.

Artist’s impression of a newly pardoned hominin (Wikicommons).

On short-faced bears, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctodus. Some giant short-faced bears (Arctodus simus) weighed over a ton and could stand eleven feet tall on their hind legs. They went extinct about 13,000 years ago for some reason. No matter how tough you are, you're never tough enough.

The term "bruin" applied to bears is in fact simply Dutch/Low German (and Afrikaans) for "brown," where it is pronounced rather like "brain." Hochdeutsch is, of course, braun, pronounced roughly like the English word.

Skeletal reconstruction of Arctodus simus at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Friday, November 28, 2025