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Palimpsest is the word On my tongue and my mind When on waveswept expanses Of seashore I find Angular outlines Traced in the sand Where castles and citadels Once used to stand. Now erased by the tides They resemble, indeed, Those ancient craters That mark Ganymede Which sagged to the surface Completely depressed Until just their outline remained: Palimpsest. My mind's own parchment Like the sands of the shore Is erased and reused It is pristine no more. Elisha ben Avuyah, it's written, Once said He who studies God's law While still a young lad Has a mind like fresh parchment At its cleanest and best But in old age the mind Is a mere Palimpsest. DPS 1982
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Note: The ancient Greeks and Romans did not have paper: their books were hand-written on parchment--specially treated animal skin, forming thin hard sheets. Parchment was expensive, and therefore when a book was no longer of great interest, the letters on its parchment were sometimes carefully scraped away with a knife and the pages re-used. Such a clean-scraped parchment--usable, but no longer as good as new--was known as a palimpsest. The quote from Elisha be Avuyah, listed among ancient Jewish sages though himself an apostate, is in the Mishnah, Sayings of the Fathers, VI, v. 25.
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Back to "The Moon: A Closer Look"
Author and Curator: Dr. David P. Stern
Mail to Dr.Stern: stargaze("at" symbol)phy6.org .
Last updated 25 November 2001