Bittersweet Paparazzo

"Bittersweet Britespede rips twin, Abagail!"

The wonder is she lived to tell the tale.

I'd love to write up this steamy saga.

It'd leave New Yorker readers gaga

And turn even the paparazzi pale,

Could I some way reduce to words

The badness of the naughty birds.

They surely would be fun to nail!

Unfortunately, my dear old Lutheran muse

Tells me, in no uncertain terms, I must refuse:

Some things are too fierce to mention

Even with the very best intention!

Sprung from a line of pious pastors,

I'm bound to heed my saintly masters.

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

A Torus

Roaming in desolation’s veld.

I came across an antique kraal,

Rock-built, that had endured since Khoi

Who’d occupied that place, then gone,

Kept cattle there, before their fall.

In the rubble, an odd gray stone,

Roughly carved in a doughnut twist,

A torus, pierced by some old fist.

I snatched this up and took it home,

Path leading to infinity;

It’s daunting cherishing the new—

Best keep old things like this in view.

So take your pick and make your way!

Life, too, is an objet trouvé.

*Brakrivier, ca. 1950/51. Not the Great Brak but a small one of that name somewhere between De Aar and Britstown.

Tuesday, August 12, 2 025

Revelation

"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."—Revelation 3:16

I'd feared myself to be lukewarm,

Suited to feed the monstrous rout,

Indulged in by the vasty swarm.

I now see, though, that I am cold.

What's more, in fact, this cold is good,

A balm for breakers of the code.

Run slow, you horses of the night.*

Run slow. Just keep the route in sight.

Don't buy the text of any creed,

But take from all that which you need.

The cold may likely know the heat;

Fate falls beneath an idiot's feet.

Damnation figures in the good.

Get it? I should have hoped you would!

*Ovid, Amores 1.13.40: "Lente currite noctis equi"; famously quoted by Christopher Marlowe in his play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (we read this passage in high school). The lines here were prompted by the similar discovery that he is "cold" by Thomas Mann's protagonist Adrian Leverkühn in Mann's novel Doctor Faustus (p. 139 in John E. Woods' translation).