Book
collectors
The books are piled in bundles on the
two-wheeled wooden barrows;
In the pungent shop air brooding book
collectors bend and browse;
The pepper dust tickles faces bow-taut with
expectation;
The subtle theatrics of searching requires
low-key acting;
Remembered near-misses, and prizes nailed,
rarefy the brain,
And there is always a rare text missing, a
need to complete.
They carry around their necks the millstone
of a high mission;
These book lovers struggle against the
sheaf-scattering of texts,
Fragments of an unnameable disaster that
may burst through;
Bringing together, making complete, what
belongs together,
They solidify what they find in sequenced
affinities.
In the white heat of a rare find, they burn
in quiet ecstasy;
And the ache of sighting demands the throb
of acquisition.
Their archival minds are encyclopedia of
book craft:
Cataloging editions, bindings, place
names, fonts, owners;
The bagged books, looking like lipless
teeth, are boxed in car boots;
In the mouth of a shelf they regain the register
of voice;
On the float of shelves the shiver of time shudders
through their pages;
They plead the cause of the human before
time’s cancellation.
Each saved book has two mythical moments
alive in balance
In two parallel tracks of time each heavy
with allusion:
The seen on the shelf and the unseen in
Platonic essence;
On time’s second track the books are purged
of all traces of use;
There is no why, where, when or whither, only
essential what;
Book collectors are seekers of the perfect in fonted form.
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