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The Basilisk Stare

"Everything is what it is, and not another thing."—Bishop Butler


The more intelligent, the less you sleep

And, exhausted, slower creep along,

Rhythm lost to redundant rhyme,

Pleonastic prosing lacking sweep.

(Make mention here, perhaps, of crime?)

Some things are shallow; other things are deep!


He fixes the future with his basilisk stare.

And you might wish you had one, too.

Beware! The detritus of longed-after powers

Mounts fetid in what once were pretty bowers.

For “longing” has a hidden "Freudian" sense.

This wombfill of stale pleasures is immense:

We are too many, though we think too few.

These are some things bizarro Faustus knew.


You can’t just cuddle? So, there's this twist:

"Post coitum omne animal triste

est—sive gallus et mulier."*

In this matching of hombre and mujer,

Those unhappy now might yet get sadder.

There is no burden that the earth can't bear,

And no fine prospect that's not best left bare.

Pasture now, tomorrow may be missed.

Dumps full today will, in time, get fuller!



 

The acropolis of the ancient Roman city of Pergamon, now in the Republic of Türkiye


*A saying attributed to the great physician of antiquity, Galen of Pergamon: "All animals are sad after sex—Gauls as well as women."

(Evidence that there were indeed such saddened Gauls in Anatolia in that era is provided by St. Paul, who visited them; he says unambiguously in his Letter to the Galatians 5:12: "I would they were even cut off which trouble you.")



Epigraph: Bishop Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons, Preface § 39 (1844)



Tuesday, January 27, 2025

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Photo by Peter Dreyer

 Cyclops by Christos Saccopoulos, used by kind permission of the sculptor.

Copyright © 2023 - by Peter Dreyer

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