crisscross

Sunday the seventh of January, 2007

The things we know, we know them well. The thrill of the new, the cast of the old, the words which herald ourselves to ourselves. Symbolic, incantatory, familiar.

In the family of language, we grow up. From the sense that bursts forth in a tongue, a calendar begins that lets us say, perhaps, "In the beginning..."

yes I'm laughing, but persevere throughout -

for now, look within language - there is always always to regard the ex- and ante-lingual - to consider, gently,

when thoughts are stripped of words, quick liquid through my brain, where do you find your place, where do you make your place, crouched, and when words pry you from your refuge, then my thoughts stand akimbo, unformed and articulate. I am more dense, now, and purposeful and idling missile.

CCXLVI Ozymandias of Egypt Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.