The Public Heart

German street band in nineteenth-century New York

The public heart, that will be fed, but has no art its food to choose,

Grasps what comes readiest, stones for bread, rather than fast, will not refuse.

—Anon., “Florence Nightingale,” Punch 29 (1855): 225.

It comes to that? No more to add?

That I no public heart have had?

That public hearts are always bad

And make up reasons to be sad?

Dismiss the data, big and small—

No cause should make one sad at all!

As Buddha said an age ago,

There's nothing there—just so you know!

The public heart, the public heart

Has always played a phantom part:

It has no art its food to choose—

There’s nothing that it won't refuse!

And nothing more for us to lose.

We, too, want art, to judge the news.

December 10, 2024

Pale and Emancipated: A Week's Weather in Armorica

Lionel-Noël Royer, Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar (1899)

“Armorica . . . continental fragments that rifted away from Gondwana and collided with Laurussia during the Variscan orogeny.”—Wikipedia

“Au début du ***e siècle, les éleveurs se fédèrent et nomment leur flopée « armoricaine ». De ses ancêtres, elle a gardé la rusticité des races britanniques.”*—Wikipédia

“Many emerged pale and emancipated into the bright January sunlight, greeted by weeping family members who had no idea they were still alive.”—The Guardian, January 26, 2025

Sunday: Mostly to partly sunny. A rise in inflation and contrary southwest winds lead to second thoughts on Capitol Hill.

Sunday night: Prisons opened, victims of the Former Regime (VFR) emerge, pale and emancipated. Lows in the upper 30s to lower 40s.

Monday: Jubilation, especially in the first half of the day. Crowds in the mid 50s, growing thicker toward evening.

Tuesday: Still crowded, but milder. Bureaucracy increases later in the day, with new appointments at higher elevations. Highs near 60.

Wednesday: Dense crowds. Highs in the mid 50s. Lows in the 20s.

Thursday: Falling temperatures. Blustery showers. Highs in the 30s, lows in the 20s. Crowds disperse by evening.

Friday: Wintry, upper 30s to lower 40s. Waves of prevarication, snow. Inflation in low-lying areas.

No end in sight.

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*"At the beginning of the *** century, the farmers united, calling their lot 'Armorican.' It preserved the rusticity of the Britannic races, inherited from their ancestors."

Hearsay

Credo in unum Deum.

In four score and fifteen years

No bomb has ever fallen on me.

I’ve fired no gun, marched in no army

To mock hell’s fears,

Betrayed by the lies of history,

Murders, and pointless deaths of brothers.

Yet I read bombs fall on others,

Whose sons misfortune goads,

Turning bombers in their turn

In distant lands improbable

That forgive the unforgivable,

Where homes and cities burn,

Babies lose their mothers,

And pet dogs, puzzled, roam the ravaged roads.

It’s all hearsay! What if it’s simply not true?

But what if it is? Propped up by pillows,

I lie in bed and stew,

Sipping a mug of early morning tea—

My chosen breakfast waits below for me.

So, very likely, is it with you, too.

And thus, I fear, the hapless morning goes.

Sunday, December 8, 2024