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Page 209

"Page" (the messenger) derives from "rustic, of
the country" -- Latin. These, my pages, come to you
from another country. But "page" (this sheet of paper)
comes from the Latin for "to fasten" -- because they
fix our attention? More likely because they are fastened
to one another in books -- fastenating! Thus fastened,
they are easier to flip through, which fastens
(as opposed to "slowens") the act of reading.

A more superficial derivation (shared by "pageant")
is from a Latin word related to "fasten" that means
scaffold, stage, plank. After all, a sheet of paper
is a very thin plank -- though fallen farther from the tree.

Here, then, is my stage and, I hope, my pageant.
(A page ant is one of millions of tiny ants whose lines,
trickling over the page, form my words and sentences.)

A blank page is an empty stage.
The audience grows impatient, starts
to hiss -- when...out rushes a messenger,
it could be anyone, any Tom, Dick or
Herald.

For lesser crimes than puns, poets
have been fastened to scaffolds by the seat
of reason -- or "nous," the mind, a nous
that snares the world. Never mind.
I never do.

(Perhaps we should turn over a new leaf.)

Note: The last line suggests that, here on my scaffold of puns, I've run out of rope. So time to turn the page. "Nous", of course, puns "noose" (just entre nous). ["Entre nous?" is French for what the mice say to the cat: Are we an entree?] "Nous" is also Greek for "mind".

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