Why the World Must Continue to Exist
To those who work on the
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
to its users,
and to us
carved on stones and bronze, scratched
on pots and shards, on the inside of rings,
in the black of uncials and the thorns
of medieval script, from the archbishop's
collection of Roman tombstones in Ravenna,
the plaster walls of Pompeii, all carrying
the words of millions who spoke them,
thought them, read them, wrote them,
weeping at the cemetery, picking at
the knots of thought in their studies,
declaiming drama, orating in law suits,
shouting on battlefields, spitting in graffiti,
"Drusilla is a whore and her husband
is a eunuch," making sense of the world,
silent voices, silent pens, silent chisels,
words now copied onto paper slips,
probed to the finest points of meaning,
whirled around, combined, slowly pooling
into the calm waters of a dictionary,
so that the ancients can speak to us,
breathe out in winged words, today,
their part in the revelation of who we are.
Lawrence N. DiCostanzo
Note: I read a New York Times article in the fall of 2019 about the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, a comprehensive dictionary of the Latin language that was begun in the 1890s and continues to be written today. I thought that this was an example of humankind at its best. I sat down and, before I knew it, I wrote the above poem. I wanted to share it and give a tribute to the people connected with the dictionary and also to us as we are members of the human race. I looked through the dictionary's website and found the "contact us" page. I sent the poem to the director who responded in just a couple of days with the request for my permission to put it on their homepage with my name. My wish was granted. Here is the link to the poem there -
thttps://www.thesaurus.badw.de/en/news.html
Hail to the human race! When we are good, we are very good.
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