Liber Mercurii - Chapter 38

Verses

Verse 77

Mercury, I blame you for every clever man who learned to speak around the truth until even he forgot where it stood.

Verse 78

Mercury, I blame you for making language sharp enough to cut bread, law, friendship, and conscience with the same blade.

Verse 79

Mercury, I blame your archon for teaching men that a thing becomes true when repeated with sufficient confidence.

Verse 80

Mercury, I blame you for the contract whose smallest letters contain the largest cruelty.

Verse 81

Mercury, I blame you whenever intelligence becomes vanity and vanity puts on the robes of wisdom.

Verse 82

Mercury, I blame your archon for every messenger who altered the message because he enjoyed being necessary.

Verse 83

Mercury, I blame you for teaching merchants to weigh gold more carefully than promises.

Verse 84

Mercury, I blame you for every thief who first stole bread, then discovered he preferred stealing trust.

Verse 85

Mercury, I blame your silver tongue for giving cowards a thousand elegant names for fear.

Verse 86

Mercury, I blame you when doubt becomes merely another performance of superiority.

Verse 87

Mercury, I blame your archon for making certainty contagious among those least equipped to survive it.

Verse 88

Mercury, I blame you for every scholar who sharpened his argument until nothing living could sit beside it.

Verse 89

Mercury, I blame you for the man who mistakes having an answer for having understood the question.

Verse 90

Mercury, I blame your archon for every law written so beautifully that no one noticed the cruelty hidden in its verbs.

Verse 91

Mercury, I blame you for giving liars memory and honest men hesitation.

Verse 92

Mercury, I blame you whenever the quick mind outruns the slow mercy that should have governed it.

Verse 93

Mercury, I blame your archon for every teacher who prefers obedience to comprehension.

Verse 94

Mercury, I blame you for making mockery easier than correction and applause cheaper than thought.

Verse 95

Mercury, I blame you for every tongue that says, I know, because silence would expose how little stands behind it.

Verse 96

Mercury, I blame your archon for the bureaucrat who hides behind procedure as a murderer hides behind darkness.

Verse 97

Mercury, I blame you for every argument won by exhaustion.

Verse 98

Mercury, I blame you for teaching men to confuse speed with mastery, as though arriving first meant knowing where they had arrived.

Verse 99

Mercury, I blame your archon for every rumor that crossed a city before truth had finished putting on its shoes.

Verse 100

Mercury, I blame you whenever wit becomes a little throne from which compassion is mocked.

Verse 101

Mercury, I blame you for every false prophet who discovered that rhythm can make nonsense sound ordained.

Verse 102

Mercury, I blame your archon for those who speak of mystery only to become its gatekeepers.

Verse 103

Mercury, I blame you for every secret kept not for protection, but for the pleasure of possessing what another does not know.

Verse 104

Mercury, I blame you when the messenger begins charging admission to the road.

Verse 105

Mercury, I blame your archon for every map that declares the unmapped territory impossible.

Verse 106

Mercury, I blame you for making some men so clever they can explain why their cruelty is actually kindness.

Verse 107

Mercury, I blame you for every negotiator who calls surrender a compromise because the loser is too tired to object.

Verse 108

Mercury, I blame your archon for teaching rulers that words may wash blood from commands.

Verse 109

Mercury, I blame you whenever a slogan replaces a thought and the crowd thanks you for saving them the labor.

Verse 110

Mercury, I blame you for the black art of speaking endlessly while saying nothing that can be held accountable.

Verse 111

Mercury, I blame your archon for every gatekeeper who invents a password merely to enjoy refusing it.

Verse 112

Mercury, I blame you for teaching fools to disguise certainty as clarity.

Verse 113

Mercury, I blame you whenever truth is treated like merchandise and sold according to the wealth of the buyer.

Verse 114

Mercury, I blame your archon for giving men a taste for clever cages: systems so elegant they forget to include an exit.

Verse 115

Mercury, I blame you for every man who turns another man's confession into ammunition.

Verse 116

Mercury, I blame you when curiosity becomes intrusion and knowledge grows teeth.

Verse 117

Mercury, I blame your archon for every room where a cat understands the silence better than all the humans speaking inside it.

Verse 118

Mercury, I blame you for every creature who mistakes restlessness for purpose and calls its circling a pilgrimage.

Verse 119

Mercury, I blame you when your bright servants return from the same error a hundred times and call the repetition experience.

Verse 120

Mercury, I blame you most for knowing every road out of the maze and still teaching men to decorate the walls.