Remembering

These ills ought you have expected?

Yes—or fled quickly to the skies.

[Te faudra-il ces maulx attendre ?

Ouy, ou tout vif aller ès cieulx.]

—François Villon, The Great Testament (1461)

What force pricks out the fragments that survive

And holds them there in limbo, alive,

For no reason easy to find out?

Memory’s a mad capricious thing:

You can’t recall things it won’t bring.

A secret hides in this no doubt:

Mind makes a comforting memorial

Of random scraps’ select tutorial:

We could not bear it if great All

Still had its former power to enthrall.

Memorial Day, 2025

Belle de Jour

Confused by too much reality,

la réalité des faits

—facts' factuality—the situation?

The Doomsday Clock's hands

stand at 89 seconds to midnight,

closer than they've ever been.*

You can buy the complete series at Amazon.

Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan save the world.†

Poets should celebrate flowers,

like the morning glory,

belle de jour, with its twining vines.

O my dreaming beauties of the night,

it's we ourselves have got us to this pass,

not knowing what we did—and do—alas.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other former Manhattan Project scientists. During the Cold War, its Doomsday Clock stood at seven minutes to midnight.

*https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2025-statement/

†https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock_(comics)

Thursday, May 22, 2025

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