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
Meaning
Poem 718 – Journey’s End
They say that life’s a journey, a pilgrimage
traversing the twists and turns fate throws at us.
Along the way our paths cross those of others,
and for a while we stroll in company.
These correspondences may be a time
of idle pleasure beneath the sun, strolling
along green ways and happy days of laughter,
with packs that are light and limbs both free and easy.
But other times the road inclines and rocks
and scree make traveling hard and insecure.
These days perhaps the laughter stops and talk
dies down, but still you stumble on together.
But when at last you find the chance to pause
and look back down the way you walked, maybe
you’ll realise the stories made, not told
(like Chaucer), are the journey’s point and treasure.
I spent tonight with friends who worked on the Winter Night Shelter project here, and it’s evolved continued support for homeless folk. An enjoyable evening reminiscing and remembering what we achieved together.
(02.12.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Toomas Tartes on Unsplash
Poem 709 – A Voyage through Voyage
‘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
Ode for the Day 