The Sameness of the Same

Wolf Kibel, Interior with bed, oil on canvas, 310 x 670 mm, Sanlam Art Collection, Cape Town

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

—Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose,

A French savant said in 1849, a year of failed revolutions:

"The more it changes, the more it stays the same."

Born in 1939, I could say that, too, Heaven knows!

I lie in bed and sip my coffee gratefully. So it goes.

I was just born lucky, I suppose!

But am I —or aren't I—to blame for the Sameness of the Same?

Saturday, January 10, 2026

Anyone Smell Burning Paint?

Prepositions are like burning paint. Forget grammar and think about potatoes.

—Gertrude Stein

The despotic words that I inherit

Wanting recognition of their merit,

Syntactic insolence gets worse and worse,

With young prepositions asserting rights,

Adjectives complaining bitterly of slights,

Conjunctions that have learned to curse,

Pronouns unwilling apparently to wait,

Verbs that attack the prefrontal gate.

Fractious nouns keep slipping out of date,

While rhyming couplets—idle, vapid things—

Desiring hotter music drag their wings.

I write a poem almost every day—

But could anyone unravel what's to say?

Rejoice, O fond musicians, in your craft,

Whose genius elevates you far above

Loquacious vocables in search of love!

Written upon reading Francesca Wade's superb new biography Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife (New York: Scribner, 2025)

Friday, January 9, 2025

¡Ay, AI!

"No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive."

—Thorstein Veblen

Caught in toils of artificial

Stupidity, cupidity

Seems the clear explanation. Well,

Don't think that lightly is the case!

The spider's caught in its own web.

In the dumb ebb of usury,

Tycoons, fallen prey to history,

Will pay the piper’s vengeful fee.

Wednesday, January 7, 2026