Percy’s Parable of Abundance – 122

Dear Companions of the Villa,

I hardly know where to put my eyes after Claire’s tale — though if her felt was warm enough to cover two, I suspect Byron has already claimed his corner of it. Forgive me if I blush, for she has a way of turning dust into something both useful and indecent.

But she is right: what appears refuse may become a treasure if worked with enough pressure and patience. And yet, I think of another art: language itself. Out of a few marks, twenty-six letters only, we compose every poem, every law, every prayer. How small the storehouse, and yet how infinite the wealth that flows from it.

So too with matter: a few simple elements, rearranged, become the cathedral and the cradle, the plough and the lyre. If we had the means to spell with atoms as easily as with letters, then want itself might be banished, and humanity left to dream unencumbered.

Is this fanciful? Perhaps. But then, so was every verse before it was written. And if atoms are our alphabet, then who would not be tempted to try their hand at a sonnet made of bread, a playhouse raised from air, or a library bound in light?

Abundance, then, is not the invention of riches, but the recognition that wealth was always here — waiting to be spoken into form.

— Percy