Satan Fakes a Bow

Maʿrūf Baghdādī, Angels paying obeisance to Adam, except Iblīs, who refuses. Topkapı Palace Museum, Istanbul, MS Bağdat 282 fol. 16r.

A More Perfect Union

The soul is like a stalactite,

Dripping down from heaven;

The body like a stalagmite,

Arising from the floor.

It takes an eternity to meet,

But then they want no more.

Effecting a more perfect union

Is what it's all about,

The kissing and the fucking,

The weeping and the knout.

Thanksgiving

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.

—Evelyn Waugh, Scoop

Too long ago to shake a stick at,

Short-faced bears huffed in caves,

Lunching on Hominini trapped

In limestone kelders, growing fat

On termites and the questing vole.

On early humans, Bruins feast

Each fall to prove their settlers' role,

All other claimants since deceased,

But moved by some foreboding fear,

They "pardon" two of them a year.

Waddle and Gobble, traditionally,

Their names, are deemed demeaning

By some, but virtue-signaling games

Do not burnish lexigraphic preening.

Names making hay of what they've got,

A new nomenclature's native form ought

To foresee the future, whether liked or not,

Say “Judas”? How about “Iscariot”?

The pardoned Hominini, thus identified,

Inventing Arts and Science, multiplied.

Artist’s impression of a newly pardoned hominin (Wikicommons).

On short-faced bears, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctodus. Some giant short-faced bears (Arctodus simus) weighed over a ton and could stand eleven feet tall on their hind legs. They went extinct about 13,000 years ago for some reason. No matter how tough you are, you're never tough enough.

The term "bruin" applied to bears is in fact simply Dutch/Low German (and Afrikaans) for "brown," where it is pronounced rather like "brain." Hochdeutsch is, of course, braun, pronounced roughly like the English word.

Skeletal reconstruction of Arctodus simus at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Friday, November 28, 2025