"The islands with all their minimum and lampblack"

"The islands with the vertebra of some Zeus."
Odysseas Elytis

I was reading Isaac D'Israelli's Curiosities Of Literature and I uncovered the charming detail that the expression 'bringing coal to Newcastle' has a Hebrew equivalent - 'to take olive oil to a city with many olive trees growing nearby'. Not as snappy as ours I feel, but it might make more sense in the original language. Other pleasing kickshaws from the same groaning table include the Chinese 'In a field of melons do not pull up your shoes; under a plum tree do not adjust your hat' and the Arabian saying 'the barber learns his art on the orphan's face'. Lest you get too carried away, there's a piece of stern, if somewhat oxymoronic wisdom to contend with in the dour Scots proverb 'wise men make proverbs but fools repeat them'.

In other non-news, I've been enjoying Madoc by Paul Muldoon. It's such a bloody wonderful mess I want to repeat the whole thing verbatim, but I'll exercise restraint, and just give you a couple of nice moments to tide you over as you rush headlong to the bookshop-

"[Archimedes]
Coleridge leaps out the tub. Imagine that."

" -Might the specter of Hamilton
playing a schottische

on his melodeon

of blood and guts and shit and piss
have been just enough to give Wilkinson a pause."

"All I have in the house is some left over
Squid cooked in its own ink
And this unfortunate cup of tea. Take it. Drink."