I’m in the library
It’s where I want to be
Here I’ll find my bliss.
Between the walls lined with books
Whose covers I won’t kiss.
This place is scary,
Now that my librarian died,
I hide amongst the bookshelves
And shield myself with the stacks
Of never rebound books.
There is no Book of Life in this collection.
Just a library of struggle
And a bibliography of attempts
And a useless reference work.
The catalogues can give direction
And the descriptions can be read
But they offer small satisfaction. Because
the synopsizes are misleading
For those who are reading
The receding texts of yesteryear.
As I stroll down the isles
Judging books by their covers
My mind starts spinning
In the google of ideas.
I begin looking for the illustrated version,
With the diagrams and charts.
Who am I kidding?
By scanning the miles
Of organized piles
For the Book of the Living.
Where are the writers?
The editors? The illustrators?
And where is my librarian?!
Come be my guide, in those corridors
Of endless information.
Show me the route to my shelf
So I can see the text
That guides the perplexed
Out of this forest of scribes.
I’m looking for life
Illustrated and annotated
By the expert in the field.
But in the library nobody can hear you think.
If you ascended that ladder
You already sacrificed the matter
At the alter of blank pages and drying ink.
The smoothness of those sheets tickle my fingertips
The letters dance like a tango in rehearsal
And the books spines smile to me
Like a lover in a dream that lasts too short.
Yeah, life was an open book, once upon a story
Then it became an unfinished piece of work
And now it’s a project that still has no name.
I promise to write, I promise to read.
These commitments only made sense before I came.
The library day ends at the start of the one to come
That still gives me few hours
To search the towers
For the Book of Life
I know I won’t find.
I hear people in the cafeteria
Caught in a laughing hysteria about milk that spilled
They will never understand;
They never met
The librarian I killed.
you're searching in vain, your book of life is being written right now, authored by your actions of multiple murders,(of the librarian, of self)rebirth, (self, and maybe librarian) courage, transition, failure, aggression, confession, confusion, etc.
ReplyDeleteI love this poem.
ReplyDeleteI remember how I used to carry the chitas around everywhere, on the bus, in and out of railway stations, like it was an extension of my arm.
It was like a continuation of myself.
And then when I ditched the whole scene, for ages I still couldn't walk around without a book in my hand.
So I would get on a bus, take out James Joyce or Virginia Wolf or whomever else I had stumbled across that week, and search the pages for what is real and true, then catch myself before I kissed the back cover.
Side Note: If you haven't yet read James Joyce's
'Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man' read it now. Seriously.
Thanks, Anon #2
ReplyDeleteI admit to not having read it, I'll check it out.
Speaking of James Joyce; I thought I'd post an excerpt from his poem 'The Holy Office'.
ReplyDeleteSo distantly I turn to view
The shamblings of that motley crew,
Those souls that hate the strength that mine has
Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.
Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed
I stand, the self-doomed, unafraid,
Unfellowed, friendless and alone,
Indifferent as the herring-bone,
Firm as the mountain-ridges where
I flash my antlers on the air.
Let them continue as is meet
To adequate the balance-sheet.
Though they may labour to the grave
My spirit shall they never have
Nor make my soul with theirs as one
Till the Mahamanvantara be done:
And though they spurn me from their door
My soul shall spurn them evermore.
-James Joyce