What Christopher Smart Knew
Too hard for any frog’s digestion, To have his froghood call’d in question!
Let us create the Art of Catastrophe!
It’s not like anyone notices.
We might as well tell the truth.
Sketch in starved, mangled children,
include the skeletons of lost lovers.
Leprous armadillos. Mute Myna birds.
Mad emperors muttering ancient curses.
Orgasmic gasps echoing into oblivion.
Winged boys falling from empty skies.
Scorpions stinging prisoners’ noses.
The certain Gentile and frightened Jew.
Swarthy Arabs riding Egyptian alligators.
Black swans and famished cassowaries.
Nothing new but everything else.
To the wider world, this doesn’t matter.
It lives only in the recreational present,
concerned with door knobs, brand names,
erectile dysfunction, and tax returns.
Our madness will be lost in the normal.
It will all be listed, stored, and misplaced
in the warehouse of forgotten wonders.
The Art of Catastrophe, shunted aside,
cast into an easily dismissed Bedlam.
Living on only in the unconsciousness
where the whole shebang actually
makes anything that matters matter.
If you like this piece, and can afford it, please dribble a few coins into the busker’s cup.
Poverty lifts you up to the bottom…
