Boomslang photographed near Botrivier, Western Cape, South Africa
After La Fontaine
In a time yet to be, when the art of writing and the alphabet had long been lost,
A coronal mass ejection from the sun wiping out the Internet
Irreparably, all knowledge left was encoded in the memories
Of human beings otherwise good for nothing, called “Files.”
The Sixth Mass Extinction had
Left scant nonhuman animal life on Earth.
Of snakes only a single species suvived
Dispholidus typus, the Boomslang,
Of which a single individual
In a sudden burst of speciation had evolved intelligence of a superior kind—such things are inevitable,
The zoötic cosmological principle teaches,
Once life has begun on a planet circling its sun.
They must be what God—or the Universe—intends.
A tree remaining in Africa from which this wise Boomslang hung
Contemplating the nature of things,
Like Aristotle or La Boétie,
A memorious old File
Muttering the facts that were his raison d’être
Happened to pass beneath
And seeing the serpent on the bough
Seized it in his teeth and bit down viciously .
“Ah,” said the snake, “poor foolish File,
What do you seek to do?
Destroy that which is so much wiser than you?
All you wretched creatures know
Is how to remember and how to bite!”*
So saying, sadly, it died:
Intelligence would perforce await
Another aeon to delight.
*Ceci s’adresse à vous, esprits du dernier ordre,
Qui n’étant bons à rien cherchez sur tout à mordre.
Vous vous tourmentez vainement.
Croyez-vous que vos dents impriment leurs outrages
Sur tant de beaux ouvrages ?
—Jean de La Fontaine, “Le serpent et la lime” (1668)
For the full text of La Fontaine's fable, see: https://www.poesie-francaise.fr/jean-de-la-fontaine/fable-le-serpent-et-la-lime.php.