“In trying to evoke the unsettling strangeness of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Conjurer (c. 1502), this poem asks whether any magic has really taken place. An empirical solution is offered, and the maxim on which Bosch is said to have based his piece is disclosed.”
The Bosch scene is a charcoal room of hell ;
the Conjurer up-carried it with him ;
and three familiars, a duck and owl—
the duck shades in the corner of the scene,
crooknecked, making an orgasm-bill,
echoing the strangely gaping mouth
of one archfiend in human form, who takes
the village elder’s inattentive purse.
Are these normal conmen? Are they gods?
We know the elder’s fooled because
the frogs form in his mouth
and fall onto
the tabletop
in pools of algaeic water.
It is Bosch’s paint-translation
of the proverb:
“No greater fool than a wilful fool.”
