Convivial Reminiscences

Luis Egidio Meléndez (1716–80), Still Life with Figs

Not warp'd by Passion, aw'd by Rumour,

Not grave thro' Pride, or Gay thro' Folly,

An equal Mixture of good Humour,

And sensible soft Melancholy.

—Pope

Try as I might, mistakes occur,

Although to virtue I defer.

A troubled heart succumbs as best

It can, and soft melancholy

Submits to humor's measured test:

Zeno refused many dinner invitations.

He liked to eat green figs lying in the sun.

I'd like that, too—if I had some!

What's more pointless than writing verse?

"We Poets are (upon a Poet's word)

Of all mankind, the creatures most absurd:"*

But yet, I guess, one might do worse!

Note: Alexander Pope's lines quoted in the epigraph referred to Henrietta Howard, countess of Suffolk (1681–1767). On the Stoic Zeno of Kition in Cyprus (335–265 BCE), who held that all men who are not wise must be mad, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, citing the Convivial Reminiscences of Zeno's housemate (perhaps originally his slave) Persaeus, who became an important figure at the court of Antigonus II Gonatas in Macedonia.

*Pope, The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated, 358–59.

Monday, February 16, 2026

The Mouse God

An owl teaches cats the art of catching mice. Unknown Lombard artist, ca. 1700.

“Hear me, you of the silver bow, protector of Chrysē

. . . , who rule with might over Tenedos—

 Smintheus* . . .”

—Homer Iliad 1.37–39

Say something, even if it’s only good-

bye! Humans’ bounden duty is to speak,

to come up with an answer. Yes, they can!

Apollo Smintheus, that lovely god,

whose temple is a house where mouse is man,

and Mickey gnaws the harnesses of time,

so well this serves: repeat and rhyme,

no matter multiplicity, things let stand,

the future’s snarl, the present's loopy band,

Minerva's bird's far-ranging beak,

Sminthe's foot upon a mouse, squeak! squeak!

Decapitating at the speed of light,

like the well-seasoned hack he is,

the Lord High Executioner says: “OK,

Just nod! Next time, you'll get it right!

Remember, you're the mouse; I'm the owl,”

spreading my wings in the falling dusk,**

but unpresciently—like Elon Musk!"

 *Smintheus, “an uncertain epithet, but most probably ‘mouse-god,’” Peter Green notes in his translation of the Iliad, from which I draw these lines (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 26n4.

**"The owl of Minerva spreads her wings only at the falling of dusk" / "Die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug."—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1821).

Sunday, February 15, 2026

Two Thousand Twenty-Six

William Hogarth, Gin Lane (1751). "Drunk for a penny. Dead drunk for tuppence."

And must no egg in Japhet's face be thrown,

Because the deed he forg’d was not my own?

Must never Patriot then declaim at Gin,

Unless, good man! he has been fairly in?

—Alexander Pope, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty-Eight. A Dialogue Something Like Horace, 2.189–92

In what age would you choose to live, if not in this?

Consider only anno Domini 1738,

Which Mr. Pope thought not all that great.

Its dentists, clearly, you’d best give a miss!

Its priests, insisting on the Real Presence

In flour paste and plonk kept down the peasants,

Or if they contrariwise called it allegorical,

Screwed them nonetheless—it’s all historical.

And speak not of the old-time ruling class

Who, when not murdering, acted out a farce!

We now dilute our gin with orange juice or tonic;

Our views of Incarnation have become ironic.

Although our leaders seem too fond of war,

They're mostly fonder yet of what's called jaw-jaw.

All hail, then, anno Two Thousand Twenty-Six,

Albeit Japhet’s eggy mug adorns the mix.

Thursday 12 February 2026