We’re Only Fooling Your Selves

Everyone loved Ossian
Who loved what Ossian meant,
That is, seemed to them to mean,

About great pagan epics
From nonclassical Europe—
Goethe, Jefferson, Schubert—

That a rude bard could be great,
That Celts and Germans could hold
Their own with Romans and Greeks.

Johnson was contemptuous,
But largely because he loathed
And found ludicrous the same

Implications the others
Got so excited about.
The scandal itself may seem

By this point ridiculous—
Tempest in colonial,
Dead white men’s teapots, but think

How much of what anyone
Finds brilliant comes down to skin
One feels one has in the game.