Death and Books

A Book

Voice that announces it isn’t speaking,breath’s corpse, & mute stranger to pull the eye from the side of the widowed ear,each book is yet several clocks—containing the time it takes to readthe time it took to write,together with uncomprehending timethat whitens the hair of fast reader & slow reader alike.

There is no limit to the number of ideas that can be found in a book—though books are not skies & ideas are not stars—Oh let’s everyone write a book!Books to make librarians weep for their shelves,books that must be stolen to be read,books that give us the courage to ask the madmanto stop shouting to himself while he rifles the cans.They say Tolstoy on the day of his birthcried for pen & paper, he had such a long book to write!

And I have seen faces, such faces,that can resist books both good & bad.What if there is no book for them?But there must be! Books by anarchists, addicts, orphans, machines!books that are acts of revenge, books that deny other books,books by humanitarians about their pets,books about personages whose bones departed the clayunder their authors’ feet, long 300-pagebooks about carpet, books in languages no one ever speaks! Where are the authors of so many books!Sometimes the library looks like a tiny endless cemeterygot up off the floor, in a land where death has been issued the only card.

How the tree eyesthe series writer as he hurries byto pick up fresh supplies;or stands gazing in the windowat the captive members of its race,longing to drop a branch through the glassso they may know the wind & rain once more.

Books replacing one leg of the sofa,propping a window to let the paint fumes out,books that are three-dimensional wallpaper to the interior decorator,bed & board to whole families of mites, the driest sleeping tablet,anonymous safe of misers’ dollars & cold caressin which mementos fade,baby’s highchair, & mosquito trap,or as counterweight in boxes in the backs of cars & trucksto keep their tires from slipping in the snow,let us toast the many authors & set our glasses on their books.

But where are the authors?What were their voices like?And was the silence begun when they stopped speakinglike the silence at the end of one of their books—

Love, are we not the sons & daughtersour parents wrote in you that we might sing about a book—

& the strange joy to be derived from the factthat with the cover closed, its sole purposeis to make fun of the published.

Sirocco

If I were a camelwould I die in the desertbecause of the sand,or would I be a camelbecause of the desert,would I dieor in the desertwould I livelike the sandwith its knowledge of deathin the lure of the oasisthat is the sand’s,closing my eyes twiceto the fancy of its stormthat would surely kill mewere I not a camel,opening my eyes twiceto the knowledge of deathappearing out of the sandlike an ordinary camelor would I be bornlike the sandwere I not in the desert—like an ordinary camelwith the knowledge of death