Behold

Jonas Lie, The Black Teapot (1911), detail. Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York

. . . nὰ ποὺ ὁ μέγας Θάνατος μοῦ γίνηκε ἀδερφός!—Sikelianos

Because I trusted my gut and lauded Earth,

Held back in flight my secret pinions’ strain,

And rooted mindfulness in willing dearth,

The dancing spring, live source of holy worth,

Revived to quench my thirst again …

Because I never figured out the when or how,

But plunged my mind into each passing call

As though it with eternity were allied,

Whether in summer plenitude or winter squall,

The monad sphere gleams like a berry now.

Rain falls from heaven and the fruit’s inside!

Because, instead of “Life starts, then ends,”

I said: “After a rainy day, light bends

More richly; earthquakes bolster up the sky;

Earth’s secret living pulse tells why,”

Great Death Himself’s become my brother.

“All that’s solid melts into air” [said Marx’s mother].

Epigraph: “ . . . Great Death Himself’s become my brother.”—Angelos Sikelianos, «Γιατὶ βαθιά μου δόξασα ["Because in my depths I praised"]», imitated from Sikelianos's Greek by PRD, https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/because-i-trusted-my-gut/?print=print.

Skulduggery

Diego Velázquez, The Temptation of St. Thomas (1632): angels fit Aquinas is fitted with a mystical chastity belt.

“Pray [for wisdom] in the presence of the skull of St. Thomas Aquinas.”—Father James Brent, OP

Tommaso d’Aquino died in Italy

seven and a half centuries ago.

Thinking, no doubt (as in that Monty Python show): “No time to lose!”

Urban V, last of the Avignon popes,

stashed his saintly relics in Toulouse.

(Toasting him in Châteauneuf-du-Pape

infallible Pio Nono approved no fool:

Urban's last reported words had been:

"Piquepoul, Piquepoul!”)

Tommaso’s brothers hired the boy a whore,

but he'd vowed his naughty parts away.

To the Church, he bequeathed his

Summa Theologiae—

three thousand Articles the bishops' score.

Dismissing such vanities as "straw,"

Tomasso hence wrote little more.

He levitated with aplomb, though, when

the plummet holder was the BVM.

Next week Aquinas's skull will be visiting our town.

We’re short an icon since we ditched TJ and Robert E. Lee.

The Angelic Doctor's name is down

(but City Council leans, alas, to rapper Lil' Me).

Now let us pray.

Notes: OP = Order of Preachers, a Catholic mendicant order; Pio Nono = Pope Pius IX (r. 1846–78), proclaimer of the doctrine of papal infalliblity; Piquepoul = a grape variety blended in Châteauneuf-du-Pape; BVM = Blessed Virgin Mary.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/260619/skull-of-st-thomas-aquinas-to-visit-washington-dc-on-international-tour

When Cats Misbehave

“Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.”—Tallulah Bankhead

I must be the most successful poet of my time

Yet no one knows my name: I use a dozen aliases

And on occasion venture into rhyme.

It’s a cliché, but true, I’ve enjoyed a thousand pussies’ kisses.

He must be, they say, “the cat who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”

No, but I kid! For modesty’s my most appealing trait.

As a kitten I made obscurity my goal.

Of my ill-gotten kibbles, I won't tell a soul!

I never knew a cat I didn’t like, Will Rogers said

He was a dog person, I think—but now, alas, he’s dead.

Wagner's music much better than it sounds. He believed that, too.

And he liked horses. I'm unsure I knew.

When Cats Misbehave’s the title of my new novel.

Dumb books outsell good books—it always pays to grovel.