Midlife crisis of the oracle

“To Serapion of Athens, the stoic, who was himself a poet and who criticized the bad literary taste of his times in sustaining the point of view that the verses of the oracles, since they were authored by Apollo, chief of the Muses, could only be excellent, Boethius the Epicurien replied, pertinently and impertinently: have you heard the story of the painter Pauson?

“No”, responded Sarapion.

“You should know this story. Having received a commission to paint a horse rolling on the ground, he painted one that represented a horse running; as the buyer got angry, Pauson began to laugh and turned the canvas upside down: thus, the bottom became the top, and the horse no longer seemed to gallop, but to roll on the ground. This, according to Bion, is the fate of certain trains of reasoning, when they are reversed. Thus some, instead of pretending that the verses of the oracles are beautiful because they are written by God, would say, on the contrary, that God was not their author because they are so bad. The first claim may be uncertain, but what is certain is that the oracles are composed in a manner that is unworthy of divinity.” – The oracle controversy, Robert Flacelière

The oracle is bored, finally, of the future

Ablution in the cold water of the spring  

Autopsy of the victim, the signature

In the disposition of the organs, fate’s writing.

The wisecracks from all the golden codgers on the wall

The epsilon, the laurel wand, moving down the hall

To the chamber where you get your meds and electroshock

So little and so much makes a poet

When the gods have decided to put in their hand

Just as the city’s sack is found where nobody knows it

In the spilled guts of the sacrificed ram

Oh Popeye when you play upon your guitar

Do you play the things that will be or that are?

She sees ambiguity shaped by ambiguity

and that wisdom is hidden in a children’s joke

or in some stray, scrawled obscenity

in a jakes or toted in a poke.

To pose riddles and not ever guess her own

Has turned her voice into a frog’s voice, and her heart into a stone.