Umpired Umbathy, Pathic and Pathological, Part IX

The Wolf and the Lamb

The strong are always best at proving they’re right.

Withness the case we’re now going to cite.

A lamb was drinking, serene,

At a brook running clear all the way.

A ravenous Wolf happened by, on the lookout for prey,

Whose sharp hunger drew him to the scene.

“ What makes you so bold as to muck up my beverage?”

This creature snarled in rage.

“ You will pay for your temerity!”

“ Sire” replied the Lamb, “ let not Your Majesty

Now give in to unjust ire,

But rather do consider, Sire:

I’m drinking—just look—

In the brook

Twenty feet farther down, if not more,

And therefore in no way at all, I think,

Can I be muddying what you drink.”

“ You’re muddying it!” insisted the cruel carnivore.

“ And I know that, last year, you spoke ill of me.”

“ How could I do that? Why I’d not yet even come to be,”

Said the Lamb. “At my dam’s teat I still nurse.”

If not you, then your brother. All the worse.”

“I don’t have one.” “Then it’s someone else in your clan.

For to me you’re all of you a curse:

You, your dogs, your shepherds to a man.

So I’ve been told: I have to pay you all back.”

With that, deep into the wood

The wolf dragged and ate his midday snack.

So trial and judgment stood.

--La Fontaine

As quoted in Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, by Jacques Derrida, Stanford University Press, 2005.

No mention of Sarah Palin.