Insect Study by Jan Brueghel the Younger (mid 1600s)
"Let the damned ride their earwigs to Hell, but let me not join them."
—Herbert Palmer, “Rock Pilgrim”
Of earwigs there's not much to tell:
They don’t bear poets off to Hell,
Led there by a daemon’s spell.
Romantic dreams, though, sap the knees,
Stopping ears against the pleas
Of goggas. Do excuse them, please!
Ashur-nasir-pal the Filth
Took all Eden for his tilth;
Great Alexander pounced upon the Nile.
What term's fit for Hitler? Vile?
But vile, also, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Crimes merciless as heartless crime can be.
Too bad, Putin, too bad, Trump,
And such marauders at the dump.
Too bad, Jinping Xi and Harris.
(No help from Paralympic Paris!)
Bad, too, that Israel's founding wrong
Does not arouse NATO's supercilious gong.
Too bad, apes, come down from trees,
Charge each other circumstantial fees.
Too bad, the agricultural revolution
Was not, it seems, the right solution—
Smartly bull's-eyed long ago,
There'd be no need now to hoe that row.
Dating from the Late Triassic,
Plus two billion years à pic,
Reaching out in time ahead
Toward tomorrow and instead,
No humans left to fright or bolt,
Goggas travel on, then molt.
"I will plod up the pass, and nourish the turf with my shinbone."
—ibid.
Atrocities under Ashur-nasir-pal II, king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 883–859 BCE.
Goggas: Afrikaans, from Khokhoi xo-xon, insects, creepy-crawlies. Used as a password during the Boer War because the English invaders couldn't pronounce it.
September 24, 2024