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
poems 2 die for 