On the Scraps of Wisdom

“None of this would have happened if people had only been stricter about the use of the comma.”—Karl Kraus, last words

I am the language that I use.

I am the nothing left to lose.

I am the debris that rains down,

The sprezzatura of your frown—

The nonchalance with which you greet

Our common folly in the street,

The junk that’s left of wisdom’s scraps,

The awful meaning of perhaps.

So stay adrift and take your drugs.

Not unaware of monstrous thugs,

Embrace those scraps of jot and tittle,

Expecting them to help a little.

Keep in mind a comma’s placement

Could well doom you to effacement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kraus_(writer)

Sunday, October 4, 2026

Hamlet: The Odyssey

Cecil B. de Mille,

Much against his will,

Was persuaded to leave Moses

Out of The Wars of the Roses.

—Edmund Clerihew Bentley.

Hamlet was translated into Arabic

In 1901 by the Lebanese Tanyus 'Abdo,

as a musical with a happy ending.

How now might a Homeric rewrite go,

With Ophelia doubling for Penelope?

Laertes once an Argonaut,

And father of Odysseus, sought

To hunt the Calydonian boar,

A dreadful beast that brought

About the death of Meleager,

Burned like a Yule log in his mother's fire

(It's said in Ovid's Metamorphoses).

Amber tears are shed for him

Elder Pliny hears, in countries beyond Hind.

Let, then, Laertes perish on the Boar's tusks—

Half a fathom long, Pausanias asserts!

Whilst trooper Hamlet takes the stage,

Singing of royal just deserts.

That's rather how the Beirut version works,

The rest is silence. Legend turns a page.

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Baa, baa, black sheep

"It is more better to give than to receive.'"

—Acts 20:35, KJV (before the improvers got to it)

The brain runs dry at close of day.

I find I’ve little left to say.

Scanning the quicksands of celebrity

And flocks of garbage, you can see

What’s to hope for, and beware.

(Perhaps some enormous solar flare

Will flush the Internet down the drain,

Wiping the scoreboard clean again?)

Best for a man is not to be born,

Sophocles' Oedipus chorus says.

So here's a suggestion for our Prez:

Best f r a sherp I s not to be s h rn.

Conviction substituted for persuasion,

Truth’s become the latest fiction:

Good's not "more better" now than bad;

Lunch is not just given—but grabbed!

Thursday, September 24, 2026