This is not the answer. What you want goes stretching back and back, remains to challenge all that silences beyond indifference, conquering neglect – the proofs of quest, the foolproof signs of struggle pitched against the odds.
And what survives from all that's lost is there to work with, build on, make – with words, these faltering words, that would speak, if they could, the difficult music of truth.
You cannot ask for better tools to work with or to trust, though words are not the answer, any more than grass or trees or stones that chart the sun, since every proof is evidence of change, and marks the hiss and curve we move through as we take the new, the unknown, track.
Christopher Hampton Christopher Hampton taught for many years at the University of Westminster and the City Literary Institute in London. Among his writings, he edited the monumental Radical Reader (Penguin 1984, reprinted 2006 by Spokesman Press, Nottingham) and published poetry collections including A Cornered Freedom (Peterloo 1980), Against the Current (Katabasis 1995) and Border Crossings (Katabasis 2005). He died in France on 28th April 2012.