The Gift of the Geegaw

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?—Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV)

Deceitfulness despairing

Sees no way out before,

With loving turned to lying,

Recruiting gifts galore.

It’s granted us to say:

The seed alone not dying,

The geegaw falls away,

With duty done, its gift

Regifted in some foreign land

Far from our parceled universe.

For better or for worse:

“Do not despair: one of the thieves

Was saved; do not presume:

One of the thieves was damned,”

Said Augustine—who would not show his hand.*

*The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts (1592) attributes this saying to St. Augustine, but its source is uncertain.

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Too Bad!

“The devil has come among us, and has begun by taking possession of all the cleverest fellows.”—Mr Toobad, in Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey (1818)

Once to be dumb was to be dense.

For every whither, there was a whence,

More information, more inflammation,

Compensating hyperinterdepend

–dence.

We enjoyed it in the age of whithers,

Whences, and rambunctious hithers.

But where is the trash of yesteryear,

Since speculation screwed the nation?

I came from nothing and to naught I go.

You must suppose I wish it so:

There’s little reason to persist

If commonsense does not exist.

It’s not been seen of late, I fear—

The clever fellows can't resist!

Monday, August 10, 2026

On Living Well

What is it to live well?

It’s not what it was yesterday!

The lessons of the sages no more tell

Us in their contemplative way.

I strive on, though, as best I can,

And in verses put my trust.

The world has given me this phone,

As owners give a dog a bone.

I write on it because I must.

One hopes, I guess, to get some gnosis,

Or so a hungry dog supposes.

Dying, language still loves rhymes,

As long it loved in former times.

Grammar might be shot to hell,

But words may teach a dog to spell,

Perhaps save its world with doggerel?

"How complicated and hard it is to live simply!"—Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov: A Novel (trans. Marian Schwartz)

Wednesday, August 5, 2026