In Doubt We Trust

“It’s certainty that makes one mad, not doubt.”―Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

A hae ma doots! * And well I might

—necessity has doubt in sight;

I doubt myself, I doubt the times,

and soon will doubt these doubtful lines.

I doubt even my doubting, too:

self-doubt is always near about,

for like unto the green bay tree.

the irradicable wicked† flout

the quick and doubt the absent dead.

Neutrinos, archaea, ants, and apes,

the Alps, the Nile, the Milky Way,

Higgs' boson, ipse dixit, if I may,

though fleeting and not here to stay,

reflect—if not entirely, well and true,

questioned by the likes of you

—on physics' famous undead cat.

Epigraph: Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: “Nicht der Zweifel, die Gewißheit ist das, was wahnsinnig macht.”

* “I have my doubts,” Scottish expression of skepticism.

† "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree."—Psalm 37:35 (King James Version).

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Bullet doux

Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia, engraving, 1514

Disoriented, brain-fogged, down at the mouth,

I consulted Dr. Despair, my longtime quack,

who swiftly put a finger on the case,

an acute autoimmune reaction to Western Civ.

Aside from aspects of the global South,

there’s not much left that I can hack or face

—I'm allergic, above all, to all talk of “race.”

“No worries!” grinned the furibund toubib,*

prodding me amiably under my missing rib.

“Never fear—you'll not for very long suvive!”

*French slang for “doctor,” from Arabic ṭabīb.

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Dishonest Dreams

They who in folly or mere greed

Enslaved religion, markets, laws,

Borrow our language now and bid

Us to speak up in freedom’s cause.

It is the logic of our times,

No subject for immortal verse –

That we who lived by honest dreams

Defend the bad against the worse.

—C. Day-Lewis, "Where Are the War Poets?" (1943)

What might I add to this at best

—for ’43, that spiteful year,

At least its logic yet possessed,

To guard against unwilling fear?

Dissimulating whence from hence

In crucifying common sense,

We take and cannot spare a fence:

Our dreaming knows no recompense.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025