Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Library (After Wallace Stevens)

I

Among forty loaded stacks

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the librarian.

II

I was once whipped

For squandering pocket money

On childish books.

How do you recover from that?

Become a poet,

Enter the stacks,

Undercover,

Soft or hardback,

Plan your revenge

Through an ISBN.

III

Dewey decimal,

Dewy decibels

Drop into silent ears,

Amplifying ampi-

theatres.

IV

It seems to me

A poem for a library

Ought to be

Strictly rhymed,

Tightly timed,

Met-ric-ally

Or-der-ly

But have you seen the scattered books on tables, the domino effect in the returns

cart, the breeze-ruffled leaves of journals, the eclectic buzz of bibliophile tastes — let

meter go unmetered for a space.

V

‘What is most precious in the UK?’

That’s easy to tell —

It’s all the things that are

Earmarked,

Triaged,

Leeched,

Threatened,

Privatised,

Closed,

Denied.

A library is such a phantom jewel.

VI

There is always someone who will see a library

and strike a match.

All that kindling.

Alexandria

Baghdad

Jaffna

Nalanda

Constantinople

But clothe yourself in flameproof pages,

Douse yourself in text,

Cut fire lanes through your unenlightenment.

VII

PLO944987 

Is my library number, 

The barcode to all my desires. *

VIII 

Why does the library close on Mondays? 

Each letter has a weekly appraisal 

Before a board of orthographic bigwigs 

And must reapply for its job, 

Which results in a transfer to a different word 

In a different poem in a different book 

On a different shelf in a different stack 

Until it can work its way back from  

Whichever poet supposed it had fixed it in place. 

You can never step into the same poem twice.  

IX 

Speaking of phantoms, 

What’s your favourite library in cinema 

And why is it Ghostbusters? 

Or, for the intelligentsia, 

Der Himmel über Berlin? 

X 

How did I get my revenge? 

I stole my father’s adult library card 

— Smooth, laminated, unused — 

And loaded up 

On D.H. Lawrence, Anaïs Nin, 

Solzhenitsyn, Georges Bataille 

And The Very Very Very Very Very Very Very 

Hangry Caterpillar. 

XI 

Libraries might outlive us. 

But rest assured, 

They represent the best of us. 

XII 

‘This also has been one of the dark places of the earth’, 

Threading the Thames to Conrad’s Congo, 

But the library lantern 

Swings in the rigging 

De-shadowing your path, 

Lending brightness. 

XIII 

Join. 

Request. 

Hold.  

Borrow. 

Take care. 

Renew. 

Return. 

* It isn’t