money doesn't talk, it swears
What do I remember?
There's a Ray Bradbury short story somewhere, where the protagonist speaks from a spacecraft to his wife back on Earth, and a cosmic ray burst wipes out the transmission, all apart from the word " . . . love . . . " .
Larkin was making a similar point with his Arundel Tomb.
Last October among the ruins of Ephesus, a mixture of Greek and Roman buildings, artefacts and stones, there was a worn inscription from the city's later period, in Latin. The only legible lettering: " . . . pecuniam . . ."
