In memoriam Michael von Lilienstein Tapscott
"Holy Moly!" exclaimed the DC
Comics hero Captain Marvel.
At which, in our Upper Montague
Street flat in Marylebone in 1963,
we laughed—Marijke, I, and you,
Michael—with joy at the foolery
of our—was it bygone?—youth.
“At its root it was was black,
but its flower was as white as milk: /
Moly is what the gods call it:
it’s hard for mortal men /
to dig up; but the gods can do what-
ever they’ve a mind to,” Homer says.*
It was only in 394 CE, I think, when Theodosius closed the temples
—although Athena's great statue
stood in the Parthenon bereft
another century†—that those
old gods may have ceased to be.
Or are they with us yet?
SHAZAM! Just in another guise?
*Odyssey 10: 304-6, translated by Peter Green (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), p. 162. Italics added.
†Until 487 CE.
Monday, February 10, 2025
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