Narcissus

Narcissus, fresco from the House of M. Lucretius Fronto, Pompeii

You think this cruel? Take it for a rule,

No creature smarts so little as a fool.

—Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735), 83-84

Each of us should devise a last resort,

Which in its essence may well be the same,

For reconciliation, once having fought

The final contest of the two-backed game,

Conceding with soliptical delight

There's in the end no more any need to fight,

The one you love, to whom you would submit

Determinedly in lovely fainting flight,

Is right at hand—and not some distant goal;

It’s you, dear heart, your own sweet, darling soul.

Once having sought, and bought, this pis-aller,

Conserved in honey, save it for the day,

When you are old and impotent in turn,

And dying for some salve to soothe love’s burn.

Note: The French expression pis-aller means "last resort," or what to do if worst comes to worst.

June 20, 2024

Pigasus

“Pigasus, also known as Pigasus the Immortal and Pigasus J. Pig, was a 145-pound (66 kg) domestic pig that was nominated for President of the United States as a theatrical gesture by the Youth International Party on August 23, 1968, just before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.”—Wikipedia

Fifty-six years ago, denied Secret

Service protection, Pigasus J. Pig

was arrested by Chicago police

on unstated charges. The Yippie leader

Jerry Rubin read his speech for him: "I,

Pigasus, announce my candidacy

for Presidency of America . . .”

Some facts: Hubert Horatio Humphrey

Jr. lost to Richard Nixon by less than

1 percent (“Dump the Hump,” the people said).

1,353,00 humans died in the Vietnam War.

Last year, 128 million pigs, it's reported,

give or take a few hundred thousand, were

slaughtered in these States—supposedly

humanely. Once again, this August, a

Democratic National Convention

is scheduled in Chicago. Déjà vu all over again!

History, Karl Marx mused,

repeats itself—first tragedy, then farce,

but these, I think, are simultaneous.

Speaking from an undisclosed location,

Pigasus Jr. declined when asked to run:

“It’s still the same old hornswoggled nation,

tant pis. Y’all are just as hooked on bacon!”

A Paper Rhinoceros

Albrecht Dürer's Rhinoceros. Woodcut, 1515.

Great apes, an Asian elephant, Manta rays, dolphins, orcas, magpies, and the cleaner wrasse,

a tiny fish that services other fish by ridding them of parasites,

have all passed the mirror test:

they recognize their own reflections—self-consciousness of a sort.

So, too, of course, have humans, who are great apes. No other creatures that I know of have.

Pure information (AI, one might even say), I don’t admit myself either to be an image in a mirror with that invidious red spot—right where the horn should be! did a bullet perhaps enter there?—on its reflected forehead.

I leave such looking-glass games to cleaner wrasses—and, after them, to the poor primates who don’t know to wipe their asses

but rather roast them, and the Earth, instead.

Better a paper rhinoceros, I'd say,—wouldn't you?—than dumb as that, and beastly dead!