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Θαλῆς 2.0
In days of yore, Thales, the famous sage,
Went out on a stargazing walk and fell
Straight down an overlooked and vexing well.
A passing woman mocked him: “At your age
You ought to know your eyes belong down here!”
The tale was once a lesson to the young;
It’s long since vanished from the public tongue.
Now an enlightened Zoomer cannot steer
A course on open streets as his gaze scrolls
Downscreen—his eyes are locked down on his phone.
And through the madding crowd he walks alone
Straight into manholes, cars, and sundry poles.
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Θαλῆς: Thales
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Stephen M. Dickey is a Slavic linguist at the University of Kansas. He has published widely on Slavic verbal categories, and has published translations of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian fiction and poetry including Meša Selimović’s Death and the Dervish, Borislav Pekić’s How to Quiet a Vampire, and Miljenko Jergović’s Ruta Tannenbaum. He has published poetry in various journals including Shot Glass Journal, Trinacria, The Lyric, Rat’s Ass Review, Lighten Up Online, Better Than Starbucks, Asses of Parnassus, and Blue Unicorn.
The story of Thales falling into a well while stargazing was usually taken as an anti-intellectual comment — his head was “in the clouds” when his attention should have been more down-to-earth. Here Dickey has made it into a symbol of the self-absorbed narcissism of idiots who walk around with their eyes glued to their FLHHDs (f—–g little hand-held devices), completely oblivious of anything around them.
This is a perfect commentary on modernity amplified by deeds of the past while those of us of an older age can laugh at the results–hoping of course there are no permanent injuries. Fun read and well written.
Those final two lines really cracked me up, Stephen.
Thanks for the read.
Thank you all for your kind comments. I’ve had this idea in my head for 10 years or so, realized I better get to it or it was never going to happen.
The ten years that you spent mulling over the idea in your head were well worth the wait.
Thank you, Cheryl.
Hilarious! I had forgotten about this particular Thales anecdote.
Now an enlightened Zoomer cannot steer / A course on open streets as his gaze scrolls / Downscreen…
It’s a sad thing when we can’t even say, after Wilde, that “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Everything’s about the gutter now.
Andrew, thanks. I am with you on your comment wrt Wilde.
It’s funny that so little has changed in over 2000 years. Thanks, Stephen!
Thank you, Paul. Though I think I would take a stargazing egghead over those obsessed with others’ Instagram/TikTok lives.
Stephen, this is great! I love the comparison with Thales. The analogy with smartphones was a nice surprise, and you said that so well in the remaining 5 lines. The ABBA rhyming is also good—we don’t see that nearly enough in English-language poetry (it’s a lot more common in French poetry).
We’ve all become dependent on smartphones, but what is with these people who can’t wait until they’re done walking from A to B before they look at their phones? When they first came out, I thought they’d never take off because I couldn’t imagine why people couldn’t wait until they got home or to work to use computers.
As Michael Warren Davis wrote in The Reactionary Mind, if they were something we drank or smoked, we’d want the government to ban them, or at least we’d wish we’d never touched the stuff.
Thank you Joshua,
I started appreciating the ABBA scheme in reading Trakl, I go through periods where I can’t get away from his work.
Very clever and well done. The last lines certainly made me smile!
Thank you, Cynthia
I told you, Stephen. Your verse is worth its weight in gold here. And now I’m trying to figure out how to weigh gold. The Greeks were freaks, and so are you.
Kip, I just saw this. Thank you.