Epitaph for a Generalist

Details escaped her, had no need,

And she at best saw mostly what she must.

She couldn’t tell oxytocin from oxycontin.

What’s in a name? Which compound went into what bin?

Which the neuropeptide, which a heinous sin?

Or Cosmos bipinnatus from the common ragweed;

They look so much the same—

But one’s a pretty flower, the other makes you sneeze.

One fears she never knew how best to please:

Allergy sufferers seemed to her no different from the just!

Thrust willy-nilly into complexity’s great mold,

She was a being with a big picture brain.

Experts in the end do only what they’re told;

She guessed at the secret rules of the greater game.

May 14, 2024

Pheidias

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Pheidias and the Frieze of the Parthenon. Oil on panel, 1868.

Φειδίας son of Charmidēs,

lived in the fifth century BCE,

greatest sculptor of antiquity,

"Jeff Koons or Richard Serra of his day,

if not the Michelangelo or Rodin."*

Only bits and pieces survive

thought to be his own work,

but there are Roman renderings

(they copied what they couldn't steal).

Pheidias, it's said, supervised the carving

of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum,

now in such great dispute with Athens.

Of the man himself not much is known.

In his bawdy comedy titled Peace,

about a vine-dresser raising a huge

dung beetle on a smorgasbord of shit

to fly him up to appeal to Heaven,

Aristophanes' Hermes

(i.e., Mercury, a god) says, to wit:

"The start of our misfortunes

was the exile of Pheidias."

He died in prison, Plutarch asserts.

All else memorious art forgets.

Those were wanton, warlike days

impatient of peace, in ways

not unlike our own. Soldiers

brought soup home in their helmets!†

But don't they always do that, you say?

*Anon.

†"I saw a cavalry captain buy vegetable soup on horseback. He carried the whole mess home in his helmet."—Aristophanes

The sections of Pheidias's Parthenon frieze in the British Museum

As the days go by . . .

Father's Day, June 16

Parents’ Day, July 28

Grandparents’ Day, September 8

Stepfamily Day, September 16 . . .

And on October 16, loyal serfs observe something called Boss's Day.

But maybe it’s time for a new day:

International Motherfuckers' Day

To celebrate the fools who run the world and let them know how much we love them.

I think it's fair to say:

They know who they are.