Acédie

Hieronymus Bosch, Acedia, from The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things

“Of making many books there is no end.”

—Ecclesiastes 12:12 (ca. 970 BCE)

Our forebears did many ingenious things,

Built absurd tombs for absurder

Kings, invented myths that still take

Wing, justified genocide and murder,

Calculated the Earth’s circumference

With only sticks and stones for evidence.

A Gallic chef invented mayonnaise,

Enhancing lunch on tuna-salad days

Miracle Whip in the Great Depression!

But we have lost all sense of proper ways.

Across the board now, art declines confession,

Slinging rancid hash, daring to preen,

Dull, duller, dullest fabulists have been,

And as to painting . . . well, I won't be mean!

For all our cleverness, it would now seem,

Nothing's been so little to human credit

As writing books to inform us of it.

King Solomon, three thousand years ago,

Indited modern literature’s obit,

But held up by its boots, it sinks too slow!