Memories of the Fourth Crusade

A knight in chain-mail spears a griffin. "Alphonso" psalter, 1284 CE.

Si’l y a des griffons, n’en mangeons point;

si’l n’y en a point, nous en mangerons encore moins.*

—Voltaire, Zadig

Franks on the Fourth Crusade (thirteenth century),

Diverted from the Holy Land by the Venetians,

To sack Constantinople, the great city,

Like all rapists, sought a rude name for those they fucked,

Pejoratively calling Greeks "griffins," their

G-word. They'd come to steal an Empire,

"Chrysostom's** foreskin—sworn genuine!—and a True Cross splinter was what I got."

It was the Venetians who looted that lion and the four horses of the Hippodrome

That tourists gaze at in Saint Mark's Basilica;

(Be only right to return them, I say,

along with the Elgin Marbles—

The British Museum must surely give those back some day!)

"If there are griffins, we don't eat 'em;

if there are none, we'll eat 'em even less."*

The Crusaders' attack the City. Miniature from a manuscript of Geoffrey de Villehardouin's De la Conquête de Constantinople. Venetian MS, ca. 1330.

**John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407), Church Father, archbishop of Constantinople and Christian saint, author of Adversus Judaeos ("Against the Jews").

Sunday, August 7, 2025

Memories of the Sexual Revolution

For Kiki Sammarcelli (1938–2022)

Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(which was rather late for me) —

Between the end of the Chatterley ban

And the Beatles’ first LP.

—Philip Larkin, “Annus Mirabilis”

Slavery abolished (just in Dubai, I fear);

Lady Chatterley's trial's a tinker’s treat;

Hear tell of JFK's murder on Great Portland Street,

Let's face it, for me '63 was a delicious year,

Route 66's kicks subside in Bel Air

(mea maxima culpa, to be fair);

Revolution over, royalties beguile

Uprising's Thermidorean* smile,

Confused in love, still wanting dates,

Rusticated in Berkeley, quoting Yeats

("Could I but have my wish, [I'd be]

Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish"), †

I want more better stories:

O tempora! . . . O mores! ‡

John Leech, Cicero Throws Up His Brief, in Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, The Comic History of Rome (1851)

* The final phase of the French Revolution after the fall of Robespierre and the radical Jacobins in Thermidor (roughly November in Fabre d'Eglantine's Jacobin calender) 1794 is known as the Réaction thermidorienne.

† William Butler Yeats, “All Things Can Tempt Me . . .” (1916).

‡ Cicero, speech to the Roman Senate against Catiline (63 BCE): O tempora! O mores! = "Oh, the times! Oh, the morals!"

Sunday, September 7, 2025

Pumpkin Fritters

Though once so poor in the South Africa

That even a maid was beyond our means,

Just for a bit, we could afford (it seems)

Sainted Emma of the pumpkin fritters

Issuing out of the cast-iron pan

As quick as we young greedy guts could eat;

Her baby cooing in an orange crate.

Stashed down there by our unshod feet.

Cinnamon sugar handy to anoint,

Her frittered art beat out a Michelin Three Star joint.

When Emma presently came no more,

We boys knew that we were really poor.

In the upshot, though I learned to cook,

Pumpkin fritters still excel a recipe book.

Wednesday, September 3, 2025