Justice Kagan envisions a rotating gavel for everybody's god

  Meticulous application

  of equal oppression, a

  conciliating remedy of

  liberty: just possibly

  a solecism prefiguring

  a benign shambles.

  An air of biding time,

  of grave confusion un-

  der due lip service to

  equality, and an obvi-

  ous groping for a less

  regressive Court major-

  ity, bear the hallmark

  of a more fertile dis-

  integration than were

  expected in the senti-

  mental lunge to revive

  icons. We've seen such
  ferment, and it can be
  a pleasure to reclaim.

           Presumably, there is much

           here that was part of the

           inherited bardic formulas,

           repeated and perpetuated

           after much of primitive be-

           lief had degenerated into

           mere clichés of speech and

           storytelling. The essential

           difficulty is to find the

           proper line between a

           thought-world that was gone 

           and a rationality that was 

           yet to come.

        

Supreme Court

  of the United States

Town of Greece v. Galloway

May, 2014

Sir Moses Finley

The World of Odysseus

  Morals and Values

Viking, 1954©