On Laws

Then a lawyer said, But what of our Laws,

master?

And he answered:

You delight in laying down laws,

Yet you delight more in breaking them.

Like children playing by the ocean who

build sand-towers with constancy and then

destroy them with laughter.

But while you build your sand-towers the

ocean brings more sand to the shore,

And when you destroy them the ocean

laughs with you.

Verily the ocean laughs always with the

innocent.

But what of those to whom life is not an

ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-

towers,

But to whom life is a rock, and the law

a chisel with which they would carve it in

their own likeness?

What of the cripple who hates dancers?

What of the ox who loves his yoke and

deems the elk and deer of the forest

stray and vagrant things?

What of the old serpent who cannot

shed his skin, and calls all others naked

and shameless?

And of him who comes early to the

wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired

goes his way saying that all feasts are

violation and all feasters lawbreakers?