Transformations

Along a corridor I saw an arrow pointing the way. This inoffensive symbol was once a thing of iron, it occurred to me, a relentless, deadly missile that pierced the flesh of men and lions, blotted out the sun at Thermopylae, and gave six feet of English soil to Harald Sigurdarson for ever.

Days later, someone showed me a photograph of a Magyar horseman; a coiled rope hung round the neck of his mount. That rope, which once hissed through the air to lasso grazing bulls, I knew was no more than a brash piece of Sunday riding regalia.

In the Chacarita cemetery I saw a Celtic cross, carved in red marble; its curved arms widened out and were linked by a ring. This tight, constricted cross took its form from another, the cross with free arms, which in turn took its from the cross on which a god suffered, the 'vile machine' denounced by Lucian of Samosata.

Arrow, coiled rope, and cross, our age-old implements, now reduced or elevated to symbols; why I wonder at them I don't know, when there is nothing on earth oblivion will not erase or memory alter, and when no man knows into what images the future will transform him.

[1954]