Language & Philosophy

Poem 1027 – Memory

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

Not fixed, memory is a malleable thing,
It swells and slips, elusive glides and flows,
Like clouds that drift upon the wind.
The views, once clear, become obscured by mists
that landward flow from shifting tide to hide
the fading touch of a departed’s kiss.
But who’s to say that what we sense is false,
that mutating recollections are a lie
and that our limited minds are at fault?
Perhaps what matters is what’s left behind,
the present impact, generous or unkind?

Reflecting on my memories ahead of a funeral tomorrow, and how our recollections of people fluctuate and change, I’m left wondering if that really matters. Where do we find meaning and truth if all we ever know is filtered by interpretation?
(08.10.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by Ian Wetherill on Unsplash

Poem 1016 – When I’m Gone

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

The world will still turn round each day,
The Sun and Moon will dance their dance,
Gravity will constant tug,
The tide flow in and then depart.

My absence will be soon forgotten,
Opinions once so clear will pass,
My footprints will all fade from sight,
And passions strong no longer last.

So what remains for me today,
When all is just a fleeting song?
Seeking to be a harmonious note,
Amongst the divergent musical throng.

Written whilst in the queue for The Globe. There’s something about standing here in London by the Thames that reminds me of our temporary nature as humans. So much has been here for far longer than I have and will continue long after I’m gone.
(27.09.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by Ana Paula Grimaldi on Unsplash

Poem 987 – Stopping Outside Rebel Rouser

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

Standing a while beneath the trees,
I seize the moment to be still,
to feel the breeze upon my face,
to listen to the gentle rain
that patient falls and ripples through
the leaves. These trees have stood for unknown
years, not knowing the urgency
with which we flit and flirt, the passing
fears o’er which we fret and tease;
these tricky knots that agitate,
slipping between uneasy fingers.

Heading into a poetry workshop on rhyme this morning, I found myself mulling over the first two lines as I admired the trees the venue is in.
(29.08.26)

© Ben Quant 2026

Poem 813 – Twenty Qs

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

Quirky and quizzical,
This quintessentially English
Quest to quantify
And quarrel over lists
To fill their qualifying
Quota, may be a quagmire
Of querulous quips and queries,
But quibbling over such questions
Is a worthy quarry,
A quixotic quiver of quanta,
That quickens not quashes
Our curiosity.

With the surname Quant, I want to promote the letter Q.
(07.03.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

Poem 810 – Lost Wor(l)ds

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

Forgotten words no longer used,
a language of the past that haunts
our tongue, I tenderly trace your text
and search your shapes in hope of meaning.

Were these passages profound
in thought, philosophy supreme,
or simply shopping lists and gossip,
our daily scratched humanity?

Did you think like us and dream
upon the page, playing with words
simply for the sake of it?
Or were your words just functionary?

One day, these words I’m typing now
will also be forgotten, echoes
of a long gone world, and merely
reproduced lines upon the screen.

When meaning is no longer known,
our sounds silenced, shorn of sense,
when words are gone do we fade too
like aging pencil on the page?

A new challenge for the year, I’ve decided to try and learn to read Old English, intrigued by the connections between our tongue and theirs.
(04.03.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo first lines of Beowulf from the damaged Nowell Codex courtesy of Wiki Commons

Poem 710 – Making Sense of Lfe

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

Filling in the blnks,
Personalising the crwd,
Identfyng objects
Hgh in the gathering clouds.

Forevr seeking patterns,
Our brains instinctivly,
Fill in all the gaps, to mke
Snse of what they see.

This is our superpowr,
Our mnd’s great party trck,
Unless there’s no connecton,
And then we come unstck.

All that said, I’ve never been good at the missing vowels round in Only Connect…
(24.11.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Poem 709 – A Voyage through Voyage

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

‘I’m going to ABBA tomorrow’, he said
Fantastic, I replied. I’d heard
so many good things about the show,
and how the holograms seemed so real.

Not having seen the gig myself,
and wanting to add to the conversation,
I started to talk about a show
that I’d just seen the night before.

I saw a jolt upon his face,
a mental change of gear, but ever
composed and mindful of the other,
he quickly engaged with what I’d said.

Realising, perhaps, that I had moved
too quickly from his coming joy,
I returned the conversation to
our quartet of Seventies songsters.

His features creased a merry crease,
‘I must have miscommunicated,
I didn’t mean the sequinned Swedes,
but Aber as in Aberystwyth!

The moral of this mutual blunder?
The danger of assuming shared
perception, a common understanding,
obvious isn’t always so.

A comic conversation from this morning that makes a perfect illustration.
(23.11.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Andrew Ebrahim on Unsplash

Poem 650 – Truth

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

A hidden beauty disguised beneath
time’s veil, erosion and graffitti,
tucked behind irrational fear and
under hope’s blind shadow sat.

Hatred rails against it, whilst
vainglorious proclamation rants,
but come what may, in quiet
stillness, unmoved and firm it stands.

But just because we wish its change
and close our eyes, place fingers into
ears and make such childish noises,
there is no metamorphosis.

And from its judgement seat the truth
returns our judgement back on us
and casts its verdict cold and clear,
untouched by lies and ignorance.

A response to recent assertions in the public arena.
(25.09.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

Poem 643 – Three Sandwiches

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

A Bacon Sandwich:
Two slices of bread with meat in between,
The perfect blend (forgive me veggies),
Both perfectly complementing each other.

A Marken Sandwich:
Two gospel stories intertwined,
The second tucked inside the first,
Giving meaning to each other.

A Human Sandwich:
The symbiotic network
That comes from living in community,
Identify found in relation to each other.

We’re looking at Mark’s Gospel at church and how he structures his narrative to communicate to us. Tonight we talked about the Marken Sandwich.
(18.09.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash

Poem 640 – Time

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

‘I’m trying to carve out time’.
What a strange phrase that is,
as if time were a solid
block of wood or stone.
It’s true that running out
of time can be like running
headlong into a wall,
immutable and solid.
But can time be chiselled into
shape? Be forced into
a form that fits our hopes?
Have violence done upon it?
Surely time is fluid?
It simply runs around
one’s fingers, flows away,
oblivious to our lives.

Today, reflection upon the book ‘The Unhurried Pastor’ and the constant demand of deadlines, has had me thinking about the nature of time.
(15.09.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by its cataline on Unsplash