AN OLD ENGLISH RIDDLE
A moth, I thought, munching a word.
How marvellously weird! A worm
Digesting a man’s sayings –
A sneak-thief nibbling in the shadows
At the shape of a poet’s thunderous phrases –
How unutterably strange!
And the pilfering parasite none the wiser
For the words he has swallowed.
This was published in The Book Of Exeter over one thousand years ago.
I will tell more about that when I give the answer to the riddle in a
few days.
Hmmm, well, I'm no moth, but I DO devour words. Does that make me a bookworm?
ReplyDeleteHi Bazza - me too thought of 'bookworm' ... something along those lines ... I wonder if we think alike 1,000 years later ... cheers Hilary
ReplyDeleteI am thinking of dementia. Having a beautiful and creative mind, then watching vocabulary and memory eaten away.
ReplyDeleteThoughts of an aging poet? I know the feeling.
ReplyDeleteAll will be revealed soon!
ReplyDeleteHello Bazza, I am with the bookworm contingent. And speaking of cellulose-eating insects, last week right before I left Taiwan there was the biggest flying termite swarm I have ever seen. There was such a cloud of them that they filled the air, and I had to close all the windows and turn off the lights. A nuisance, but I suppose on the whole they are an ecological necessity.
ReplyDelete--Jim
Hi Jim. I am not certain of the place of termites in an eco-system. It must have been like a plague of locusts! I have been away for a few days so I will be publishing the (fairly obvious) answer to the riddle later in the week.
ReplyDelete