1125. The Battles of the Pen and the Scissors - Shem Tov Ardutiel (pen name Santob De Carrion)

Excerpt From The Battles of the Pen and the Scissors (CE 1345) by Shem Tov Ardutiel (pen name Santob De Carrion)

Writer, you hold a flame in your hand,

or is it the blade of a sword or a spear-- 

the tree of knowledge of good and evil,

or a staff to make wondrous signs appear?

Are there words enough in all of song

to praise the pen? Who else could bear

the burden of bringing back the past

and preserving it then as though with myrrh?

It has no ear with which it might hear,

or mouth with which to offer answers,

and yet the pen, in a single stroke,

at once does both—observes and remembers.

At night he says “Tomorrow I’ll write,”

but there nothing at all to back up his words;

the heaven’s frost caught in his face,

and the cackling of mocking ice is heard.

Don’t pride yourself on tomorrow’s prize,

when you have no notion of what it hides.