- amolosh
- Jul 1
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 2
Amphisbaena in the Aberdeen Bestiary (ca. 1200)
The amphisbaena has a second head at its tail end, as if a single mouth did not suffice to spill its venom.
— Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.85 (77–79 CE)
A legend old as Ur of the Chaldees
Informs us that thirty-six righteous men
Leaven bad humanity’s unfair dough,
But a tablet recently unearthed
Asserts that, completing this assignment,
Seven unjust women are in the know.
Justice demands its matching Other: Look!
They cried in Nippur, Lagash, and Uruk.
It's said those girls should number thirty-six
To equal the Lamed Vav Tzadikim
(Borges’ name for them’s “the Lamed Wufniks”),*
Or "righteous hidden men," in total tally,
But others insist that seven suffice
With facts recorded on far side of nice
To compensate for Earth’s injustice dearth,
Best of all possible this-worldly worth.
That role's by far the hardest to fulfill,
Too tough for ignorant unrighteous males,
Like you, like me. A Gloria Grahame
Near lookalike in Congress (R–Belial),
Sets out their iniquitous family style:
When Amphisbaena backs a specious bill,
Cute as a bug’s ear, holding, there, the floor,
Unfairness, admirably, never fails:
Unfair outcomes make taut those salty sails,
Justice spoils the rich cream in petit-bourgeois pails.
Think but of the risks that we once took.
And Father’s hackneyed unforgiving look.
It's fun to pair the sainted and the crook;
Justice and its Other, partners, what’s more,
Just as envisaged in Chaldean lore
And by the Harappans long before,
Sex up the sempiternal score.
*Jorge Luis Borges, Manual de zoologia fantástica / Book of Imaginary Beings (1957/1969).
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
