“He woundeth and His hands make whole!” When I later found out that Achilles’ lance also cured a wound it had inflicted, the fancy took me to write a dissertation on the topic. I went so far as to consult old books, dead books, buried books, opening them, comparing one with another, searching for the text and its meaning, to find the common origin of the pagan oracle and the Hebrew thought. I even consulted the worms in the books, to tell me what was in the texts they were chewing.
“Dear Sir,” replied a long fat worm, “we know absolutely nothing about the texts we chew, neither do we decide what we chew, neither do we love or hate what we chew; we just chew.”
I could get no more out of him. As if the word had been passed along, all the others told the same story. Perhaps this discreet silence about the texts they were chewing was another way of chewing what had already been chewed.