Demonology

Max Ernst, They have slept in the forest too long (1926)

"We have met the enemy and he is us."—Walt Kelly, Pogo

Elemanzer, Peckin the Crown, Grizzel, Greedigut,

Pyewacket, and that other “like a black Rabbet,”

Imps “no mortal could invent,”† were no doubt bad enough,

But they’d scarcely make the cut

Alongside Grindr, GitHub, Influenster, and Crunchyroll,

Let alone Truth Social, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Google, and "X":

Our time’s the undisputed champion when it comes to hex.

Alas, the martyrs on this Inquisition’s pyre

Are us—who in the first place lit the fire.

Max Ernst, The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and the Painter (1926). Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany.

† Matthew Hopkins, The Discovery of Witches (1647), quer. 4.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Pyewacket

David Scott, Nimrod (1832)

How tedious is getting up,

But tedious to stay in bed!

What if it’s all a dream, my dream,

And in that dream a weighty conflict’s fled?

How trite to say: Things aren’t what they seem,

Although it seems to me quite certain that they’re not.

I advance toward a forbidding Ragnarok

Where Nimrod labors to take stock.

Why thus I am, Vedanta claims: Tat tvam asi.

And that makes sense: It’s us, or me,

Plunged on our own into a time

When digital culture plies its racket,

No point in supererogatory rhyme:

Doktorvater is Pyewacket.

Note:  Doktorvater = German, "doctor father": academic superviser. Pyewacket = name of a demonic familiar spirit—here, presumably, Google; a Siamese cat in Richard Quine’s 1958 film Bell, Book and Candle. 

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Skullfire

To burn always with [a] hard, gemlike flame . . . is success in life.

—Walter Pater

And the ocean water stirs

In salt-worn casement and porch.

Plies the blunt-nosed fish

With fire in his skull for torch.

—Walter de la Mare, “Sunk Lyonesse”

Burning a hard gemlike flame,

Probing deadly, just a game—

Polymorphous perverse conjecture—

We in extreme spirit venture,

From Southern Seas to Northern Lights,

Seeking thrills and novel sights

From the heights of Hurlevent,*

Not much grasping what we can’t.

In the far future, with our dug-up bones,

Archaeologists will unearth our phones,

Relics of the Anthropic Age,

Glad in New Lyonesse to have skipped that page:

No click-bait come-ons to enrage,

Idiotic gossip to depress.

* Les Hauts de Hurlevent is the French title of Wuthering Heights.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025