Tears

On est grand, très grand par l’amour

et on est plus grand par les pleurs,

par les pleurs!—

Jacques Offenbach, Les contes d’Hoffmann (1880), Epilogue

“Love makes us great—very great—

And greater yet, weeping, by our tears!”

Here Offenbach's last libretto ends,

Celebrating the poet Hoffmann and his drunken friends.

Snowflakes pile up, and avalanches slide,

Thoughts through innumerable synapses glide,

Birds flock, starlings murmurate at dusk, fish swim in schools,

And countless seeds float freely on the breeze.

"They" is life's exponential rule.

Better thus not hold back those tears,

Love is one, and they are many:

The cosmos runs on multiplicity.*

But taught not to be a crybaby as a boy,

I learned the lesson and reject such fears!

*Charlie Wood, "Why 'Many' Is Displacing 'Small' as the Hottest Frontier in Physics," Quanta Magazine, citing P. W. Anderson, “More Is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of the Hierarchical Structure of Science,” Science 177, no. 4047 (August 4, 1972), https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_different_PWA.pdf?mc_cid=3146b89807&mc_eid=ad6a8f5ad8

Everyone Sometimes Does a Little Something Stupid†

"I’m not sure what weapons the Third World War will be fought with, but the Fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones."*—Albert Einstein

How did we ever come to this—

By what mad game of hit or miss?

Are things really what they seem?

La vida es sueño, "Life's a dream,"

says Calderón.

We'll wake up, then? If so, how soon

—and to what song?

"Everyone Sometimes Does a Little Something Stupid"†?

Is that reflection still of use

When human trash degrades the Moon??

Shouldn't we now speak in tongues?

Our rulers flash their dirty fingernails (they're none too bright).

Remember this if all else fails:

Time is the elephant in the street

Where doomèd lovers used to meet,

But luck's the [R]hino in the room.

*"Ich bin nicht sicher, mit welchen Waffen der dritte Weltkrieg ausgetragen wird, aber im vierten Weltkrieg werden sie mit Stöcken und Steinen kämpfen."

†Musical accompaniment: "Jeder macht mal eine Dummheit" / "Everyone Sometimes Does Something Stupid," title of the slow foxtrot in Nicholas Brodszky’s 1933 movie “Scandal in Budapest” (Skandal in Budapest), https://youtu.be/Itv9GkSh9ZY?si=CbNACbwYRdI1kcN8

Tchotchkes

Gauguin, Jug in the Form of a Head, Self-portrait (1889). Kunstindustrimuseet, Copenhagen. Based on a severed head that Gauguin had seen at a guillotining.*

Our ancestors' credenzas were crammed with bric-à-brac:

Wax flowers under glass domes, centennial mugs,

Hand-painted teacups, porcelain figures, Toby jugs,

And old family portraits in rococo frames

Perched on sideboards and buffets in each drawing room,

Beloved photographs of long-forgotten names,

Household shrines of old-fashioned family fancies—

You might say, latter-day "lares and penates."†

Gauguin made a jug of Prado's ensanguined head.

Parlorless, we "curate" such tchotchkes of the dead

Accessorizing our minds, instead, with knickknacks,

Gleaned from the influential online scandal stacks,

Bold salacities of contemporary celebrities,

And fancied heroes of the awesome scene.

How time flies! One picks, one chooses, dude, and then one goes.

Goodbye, it seems, to those amazing bibelots!

*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jug_in_the_Form_of_a_Head,_Self-Portrait?origin=serp_auto. The jug has a severed ear, in homage (?) to van Gogh.

†Lares et penates: The household deities of ancient Rome; https://roman.mythologyworldwide.com/spirits-of-the-roman-household-the-importance-of-lares-and-penates/?amp=1.