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# The Scribes Somehow Survive
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/the-scribes-somehow-survive-paul-dagostino-thomas-micchelli/
- Published: 2018-05-05T14:00:42.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:10:25.000Z
- Description: The soldiers are killed, and the jesters change their names.
- Author: Paul D'Agostino
- Tags: Art, Drawing, Weekend, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/05/oracles2-rev.jpg)

Thomas Micchelli, “Oracles (after Bosch)” (2018), graphite and pencil on paper, 6 x 9 inches (courtesy of the artist)

  
**The Jesters Change Their Names**

Still something  
about a castle  
still. A castle still  
in the wake of so much quaking.

The wake of histories  
crooked and quaking,  
although the king’s crown vanished long ago  
with the horses and the oxen,  
and the king.

And the queen  
found a better kingdom than this one,  
and this one  
found a better queen.

And the better queen  
had all the soldiers killed,  
for fidelity is always  
key.

Key to history  
is killing soldiers  
and kings  
and queens,  
and sometimes  
horses and oxen.

The scribes, at times,  
survive in some way,  
and the jesters change their names.

And mothers flee and  
survive in some way.  
They’ve the will, and someone  
surely has to.

But does anyone  
surely have to?

The oracles.

Quakings still  
in castles still,  
they say.  
No moats to fill  
when they’re up on hills.

Yet after all the kingdoms anyway  
comes the greater bloodshed,  
the greatest.

And the stones  
who’ve known all along  
tell the skies,  
invite the vultures.

  
— *Paul D’Agostino*