Cleome

Sensu stricto—"in the strict sense,”

See the spiny spiderflower,

Whose old Greek name wants recompense.

Pollinated by bats—aloof,

In fact, from spiders [everywhere,

With over 53,000 species—

The genus Cleome has 199],

My specimen's a volunteer

That a sturdy head endowers,

Rebooting on its single stalk

(Verses meant to picture flowers

Can't shrink from orchidaceous talk!)

Time and again, there, bidding fair—

Depucelating maiden air . . .

Note: Cleome does not belong among the Orchidaceae. However, that genus name, the term "orchid," and the adjective "orchidaceous" all derive from ancient Greek ὄρχις orchis, meaning "testicle."

The name "cleome" was probably devised by Linnaeus from Greek kleos, glory.

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Original Sin

—Say it, no ideas but in things—

William Carlos Williams

But likewise also say: No things but in ideas.

Grinning there at birth, those karmic dogs, old fears

That breach the bloody door where we come in,

Dr. Pelagius points to the poor red mewling thing,

“You mean you think that's full of Original Sin?”*

And circumcises the mite to set it right.

Time now to reconsider everything we thought;

We could be wrong! What was that stuff we bought?

The unacknowledged legislators, as Shelley said,

Of the world,* may in these after times find inspiration dead,

Or faint, or ill, or sorely gulled;

Hope's integument, whose plastic shield

leads power tools to yield.

(Dumb rhyme—it mocks the tongue-tied hierophant!)

How, then, to write poetry . . . when you can't?

* Randall Jarrell, Introduction to the Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams (New Directions paperback, 1969), ix.

** “. . . hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration . . . mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not. . . . Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”—Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry” (1821)

Sunday, August 24, 2025

From the Cookie Jar

AUDREY I do not know what “poetical” is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?

TOUCHSTONE No, truly, for the truest poetry is the most feigning . . .

—Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 3, sc. 3

In the rebellion of the prince-bishop of Liège

In 1466 against the rule of Burgundy,

The inhabitants of Dinant, a Walloon city

Besieged by Charles the Bold,

With nothing to eat but flour and honey,

Made biscuits out of them, called couques,

From which our word "cookies" derives,

Describing crumbly treats, baked gold,

And spies concealed in digital trees

That spill the beans on what they're told.

Referring to craquants they munched,

French peasant rebels were called croquants,

From which our use of "crackers" comes:

Not just insipid things with tea,

But sturdy backbone of the GOP.

There is so much that language learns

From its recourse to borrowed terms,

Our fabled etymology!

With science prey to hackers' spite,

Art must, as always, feign delight.

Wednesday, August 20, 2025