Loading ...I think I’ve said already that I feel myself that I’m an archaeologist manque – certainly I’m terribly keen on picking things up off the ground, particularly interested in pottery, and the next poem is about picking up a piece of pottery, but it’s also I think about the past and ones fascination with the past and the strange continuities of things. It’s called ‘Sigma’, as in the Greek letter of the alphabet. By the way, I pronounce the word S H E R D S “sherds”; some people say “shards”, but you can distinguish your real archaeologist from your amateur person because a real archaeologist talks about sherds, not shards.
Sigma
Unable to get on with anything,
Throwing out papers, fiddling with piled mess,
I pull a box of sherds out, stacked up here
Among the whole accumulation, less
Because I want to but because it’s there -
A scattering of pottery I picked up
Among the Libyan middens I knew once,
And rake it over, chucking out here a cup-
Handle, broken, and a flaking rim:
And, in among it all, there’s suddenly
This scrap that carries a graffito – Σ
A sigma, a scratched ess; and try to tell
Where it once fitted – as beginning or end,
As some abbreviated syllable,
Or sign of ownership, or just a scribble
Made on a day in 450BC
By someone else who messed about like this,
Unable to get on with anything,
But made his mark for someone else to see.
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