LOOK ON MY WORKS (from pj):

Big brains ponder EU architecture (Angus Roxburgh, 6 December, 2002, BBC)

Half-way through this week's plenary session of the Convention on the Future of Europe, I noticed that two men appeared to be employed to sit, in turns, on the stage just behind the Convention President, Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

His sole purpose, it seems, is to push the president's chair in and out when he decides to get up and stretch his legs.

He does that quite often, and comes back each time with his huge ET-like dome of a head bulging with even bigger thoughts.

The convention is a place for profound thinking.

Nine months into its work, it is deep into the minutiae of constitution-writing.

And make no mistake - the European Union's future is in the hands of some very clever men and women.

Perhaps some day the cliffs of the Rhine will be carved with Mount Rushmore-like statues of the three key figures - the beefy former Belgian Prime Minister, Jean-Luc Dehaene, the silver-haired, arm-waving Italian, Giuliano Amato, and "ET".

The more appropriate monument is likely the statue of Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 8, 2002 10:40 AM