IN MUNDO SATIRAE

IN MUNDO SATIRAE

“It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger end; but his present majesty’s grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.”

Jonathan Swift, GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

tene cervesiam meam. Horati,
Kings and Emperors
cut their fingers
on egg shells
every day

not that that
makes it a logical
defence for
jettisoning
the Republic
(the side, dear Horace,
which, I believe,
you once fought on)

not that we know,
are told, anything
about eggshells
and the grievous wounds
inflicted
upon royalty

stuff
that might
Humpty Dumpty style,
bring that entire
playing card tower
edifice
crumpling down

no
no one has a clue
about this
and other
spurious
causes of war
reasons for battle

not a whiff of any of it
outside mundo satirae,
that treacherous
world of satire

and here I remember, as
no doubt you do too
the doyenne of us all, a
man of the cloth,
a most acerbic, ironic,
comic fellow
whose factual
       account of
travels I quote above
was seen
   through by many
a stately bishop
not believing
a word of it

but there it was
on the page
          cutting like
a razor,
worse
    like oxy-acetylene
and not a soul to realize
they were
bleeding. burning,

his like today
we do
    not have

do not see
       and for
the satire world so
much more the pity

as today’s titanic giants
supreme in
    blissful idiocy

proclaim themselves Jesus
proclaim themselves Pope
proclaim themselves God

which we being
humans are wont
to believe

slaughter, torture,
martyr

those who don’t
for ultimate crime
of blasphemy, heresy