I have become haunted by this poem by Percy Shelley, particularly as read by Harry Melling in “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”.

Melling is a genius, probably the only good thing to come out of the Harry Potter series. Shelley is also a genius. Buster Scruggs is an anthology of six short stories centered around the old west – and well worth your time. But the one with Melling I can’t stop thinking about (spoiler alerts).

He plays an armless, legless man, an intellectual, driven around old west towns in a cart by his handler (Liam Neeson), where he regales the crowd with readings (recited from memory): Shelley, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence. Delivered powerfully and with confidence, to the visages of the uncomprehending dregs of old west society. And slowly, the crowds start to thin out; after the sensation of an armless, legless man reciting poetry becomes mundane, nobody wants to stay for Shelley. They turn their attention to a chicken, who can peck at numbers correctly. The Melling character is replaced, thrown into a pond by his handler when the money stopped flowing, too much of a hassle to be bothered with despite his soaring intellect.

What struck me was the extraordinary vulnerability of the Melling character; a rare intellect at the mercy of his handler, and of the attention span of idiots. And it seemed to me a metaphor for the vulnerability of civilization itself, especially given that the Melling character was reciting Ozymandias, about an ancient Egyptian pharaoh and the wreckage of his empire, to a people who represent the wreckage of ours.

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.”