Perhaps If you think there is nothing then you have nothing to say If you think there is something then you have something to say and if you think of honour you will have something honourable to say.
There were those people – I’m talking of the past when there was still a choice of occupation.
The word itself is an indication as to the choice.
There were those whose occupation was the occupation of territories and there were those whose occupation was work small tasks slender hopes in and on and for and with their peopled land.
There was always a conflict over the meaning of words nobody ever agreed except in groups of languages certainly there were words in abundance all those languages each discussing the same and each in their own language nobody ever agreed except in groups of languages.
So there was this word occupation.
There were two languages which misunderstood each other’s definition.
One said – right, I occupy, let them work, that’s their lookout.
I’ll take all their produce by force or by hook or by crook.
So some were forced and some were crooked and some were hooked.
The more abundance was produced the more the occupiers took the more the people worked the more they got exploited.
Frequently they changed sides.
All because of a word with two meanings.
But even in those days there were people who were honourable.
Such a person, by what I hear, was the poet Catullus who once addressed Caesar in the following lines:
Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere nec scire utrum sis albus aut ater homo.
He had no desire to please Caesar or wanted to know him at all.
John Rety John Rety came to England from Hungary in 1947.
He runs the Hearing Eye Press and the regular Torriano Meeting House Poetry Readings in London.
The poem is from his collection In the Museum (Hearing Eye, London 2007).