Revelation

"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."—Revelation 3:16

I'd feared myself to be lukewarm,

Suited to feed the monstrous rout,

Indulged in by the vasty swarm.

I now see, though, that I am cold.

What's more, in fact, this cold is good,

A balm for breakers of the code.

Run slow, you horses of the night.*

Run slow. Just keep the route in sight.

Don't buy the text of any creed,

But take from all that which you need.

The cold may likely know the heat;

Fate falls beneath an idiot's feet.

Damnation figures in the good.

Get it? I should have hoped you would!

*Ovid, Amores 1.13.40: "Lente currite noctis equi"; famously quoted by Christopher Marlowe in his play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (we read this passage in high school). The lines here were prompted by the similar discovery that he is "cold" by Thomas Mann's protagonist Adrian Leverkühn in Mann's novel Doctor Faustus (p. 139 in John E. Woods' translation).

The Dogwalkers

Dogs are easier to love than people.

—Joan Rivers

Truckle, fawn, cower, toady, shrink,

Or cringe before the latest news—

Ersatz, a substituted fraud,

Not life.  Prequel on video.

You never know how far they'll go!

I've grown to hate the endless strings

Of voices on the radio

Making sense of senseless things.

The friendly walkers with their dogs,

What do you think they really think,

Advancing calmly in the light,

Entelechy* their line of sight,

Assuming what the future brings,

Guessing it might be . . . alright?

*In Aristotle's philosophy, the soul or force that “realizes or makes actual what is otherwise merely potential” (Encyclopædia Britannica).

Friday, August 9, 2025

Amusement

The a in "amuse" was once privative:

In Greek, άμουσος means “unmusical”—

i.e., not acquainted with the muse: a “clown.”

Which word derives in turn from colonus,

Occupier of what was another's land,

Something, willy-nilly, that we all are,

Some of nearby territory—

Though most, naturally, by far.

“Sir, Colonus is an Inhabitant:

A Clown Original: as you’ld zay a Farmer, a Tiller o’

Th’ Earth,

E’re sin’ the Romans planted their Colony first."

—Ben Jonson, A Tale of a Tub (1633), act 1, sc. 3

Hence we're amused, albeit unbemused.

It's not just our language that's confused!

Thursday, August 7, 2025