Was the memory of the word before it was written; or was the word in the memory or the memory in the word.  There are ragged wholes in the memories of the old.  People gone; landscapes and places, entire epochs gone.      Not neatly subtracted but torn out, rent out large moth holes chewed out.  It is this irregularity that makes them poignant.  They cross the regular boundaries like pages ripped and irregular across the measured grid; and we are like  ancient wanderer mendicants are dressed in holey beggars garments from all the countries of the heart still homeward bound, clowns of time becoming the naked memory of that which was  was before the world.