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, could that be best?

All manner of things might well be well.

But if they’re aren't, how would 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, the 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

Too Fierce to Mention

Pied crow scavenging. Photo by John Fincham

*Oh, oh, the pied crow! / All the way to Mossel Bay / Flying high and swinging low / At the big sea turns to go.*

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Some things are too fierce to mention

But I mention them anyway!

I remember these crows from my childhood

In the "monstrous Karoo" (young Burchell's words)

Highly intelligent birds, they peck out the eyes

Of lambs—and sheep drought has weakened

There used to be a bounty on them—a shilling, I think

Someone once showed me a small bag of crows' heads

You took them to the police station and got paid.

Burchell loved Africa, especially perhaps the Karoo. Many years later in England, grown old and famous,

Filled with anguish, he killed himself

I warned you some things were too fierce to mention

Descending from the mountains near Graaff-Reinet

*Aai, aai, die Witborskraai!

Hiervandaan na Mosselbaai

Hoog gevlieg en laag geswaai

By die groot see omgedraai

--Afrikaans traditional ditty

A poem also using this epigraph, titled "Onsin" ("Nonsense"), appeared in Idyssey on September 1, 2023.

https://groundup.org.za/article/where-lambs-have-no-eyes_3002/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_John_Burchell

Thursday, November 27. 2025