Ode to the Epimenides Paradox

Lyrics

He woke up on Mount Ida.
Fifty-seven years of dust in his mouth.
The world was new and wrong.
The wild thyme on the path smelled sharper.

Epimenides, the sleeper, the prophet.
Came down from the cave of Zeus.
Looked at his own people, his own sun-darkened hands.
The heat was a hammer in 600 BCE.
And he opened his mouth, not to prophesy,
not to bless,
but to tie a knot.
A perfect little knot of words for his countrymen.

And he said: All Cretans are liars.
And the sentence turned on itself.
A scorpion with its own tail in its mouth.
If he spoke the truth, he lied.
If he lied, he spoke the truth.
The first crack in the great stone of the world.

Centuries passed.
The knot held.
A man named Paul wrote a letter to Titus.
And put the poison in the book.
"One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said,"
"The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies."
And your little wound in logic
became holy.
Became law.

And he said: All Cretans are liars.
And the sentence turned on itself.
A scorpion with its own tail in its mouth.
If he spoke the truth, he lied.
If he lied, he spoke the truth.
The first crack in the great stone of the world.

And everything after...
is just an echo of you.
Every system that eats its own axioms.
Every truth that proves itself impossible.
It all started there.
On a hot day.
With your simple sentence.
The little snake he sent to bite the ankle of reason.
And it never let go.

All Cretans are liars.
Epimenides said.
Standing in the dust.
A Cretan.