To Seek, Look Around
June 2012
si monumentum requiris was inscribed on the Fremantle library plaque. We almost didn’t see it. It’s funny how we don’t often see what’s right in front of us.
My youngest daughter had dropped her newly borrowed fairy books as we left the library. It could have been the loose shoelaces or the hair in her eyes that tripped her up or perhaps it really was the stack of books she insisted she could carry by herself.
As her older brother and sister helped her collect her scattered treasures, I read the dedication to the man who campaigned for the first public library to be built in Western Australia. I traced my fingers across the raised font, murmuring si monumentum requiris as though utterance would help with translation.
“What’s that mean?” asked my son.
“Is it Latin?” my eldest daughter interjected.
“Yes- what do you think it means? Our language comes from Latin.. so you can almost guess the meaning of some words..”
“I don’t know” came the chimed response. “Is it about a monument?”
“Can we get the donuts now?” asked the bundle of books, stray hair and shoelaces still undone.
We ducked out in to rainy drizzle, glad of wet weather in a state dry and hot for most of the year. A polish man had parked his bright yellow caravan in the middle of the square, near the library and the sounds of Celine Dion drifted across the cobbled paving stones.
While we waited I suggested to the children that we google the Latin inscription and see what we could find out.
si monumentum requiris, circumspice lept on to the small screen of my phone and we huddled round, cold and curious.
“If you seek his monument, look around” I translated. “Oh, and it’s part of the epitaph of the architect Sir Christopher Wren who built St Paul’s Cathedral”.
“Is that in England?“ asked my first-born; brown eyes thoughtful as new ideas sparked.
“Are the donuts nearly ready?” asked the littlest one. How does so little hair get so dishevelled?
Ignoring them both, my son’s question came rapid-fire: “but what’s it mean?” The girls' attention captured, three pairs of eyes looked up; expectant, vulnerable, inquisitive.
The old library stretched and trees dipped with rain, sweet and fresh as the smell mingled with the sizzling aroma of sugar and cinnamon. I glanced from my children’s faces to the drift of grey clouds and the hint of rainbows in puddles we would later jump in and I thought to myself: it’s an epitaph for the Artist.