Showing posts with label Of. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Of. Show all posts

Monday, 2 December 2019

Of

Borne of takeover, photos of nightlamps,
Stories of birthdays, bedrooms of blessing,
Family of finds, classrooms of interest,
Love of likelihood of longevity,
Questions of gesture, fractals of nature,
Companions of day, strangers of streets,
Handspans of knowledge, canines of cutedom,
Murmurs of mortality, mind of maze,
Machines of plenty, robots of ruin,
Murals of water, archways of lightbeam,
Shake-ups of nervous systems of silence,
Grid points of bomb sites, foot wounds of size large,
Entrances of exits of entrances,
Arms of oblivion, seas of trouble.



Sunday, 25 October 2015

Of (October)


My colleague Susan Southall writes blogs. She adopts the titling convention of ‘On’ before the subject. ‘On Hope’ she announces. ‘On Remission’ she warns. Like its cousin ‘Of’ it hovers, petite and (sometimes) portentous. How did this convention evolve? John Florio translated Montaigne (1603). ‘Of Feare’. ‘Of Steeds, called in French Destriers’. Montaigne uses ‘De’, implying in the process he knows as well as his reader the subject will never be exhausted. To assay is easy, but he keeps writing to understand what he understands, better. What do we know? Of Translation? Of Understanding? Of October? Of Anniversaries? Of Anything?