Moscophoros (Calf Bearer), Athens Acropolis (c. 570 BCE)
Music for a while
Shall all your cares beguile.—John Dryden / Henry Purcell, Oedipus (1692)
When you can’t write, write, an old saying goes:
You know what nobody else knows! But so
Do I. And should this knowledge be preserved
Or lost? And if the former, why? We need
To forget—it’s an essential human role.
To know the world we cannot grasp it whole,
But have rather to sum it up in bits
Working out for ourselves where each best fits.
Art was invented to preserve a trace
Against the rules that pin things in their place.
Rules, you argue, were made to be broken.
If so, I’ll leave my final thought unspoken
And simply offer an Archaic smile
To serve as music for a little while.
October 31, 2024