The Graveyard of Books

        by Marc Pollitt

Dust clutches a singular odor
within aisles of forgotten books.
Swaybacked pine shelves, propped on concrete blocks
stand like stretchers stacked past reaching height;
their yellowed casualties beckon
in patient desperation, much like
death-row dogs in their seventh-day pens.

Eventually, all books come here,
like pachyderms to the mythical
hidden graveyard of the elephants.
And a sort of ivory hunter
follows, too, in a desperate quest
to find trophies or buried treasure
amid the bones of old bestsellers.

I am one of those ivory hunters;
I have pillaged the guardian shelves
and claimed trophies I can never read.
Hundreds--no, thousands--of salvaged books
encumber my walls and floors and rooms.
I am not despoiling the graveyard;
I am assisting its migration.

 

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©2001 by Marc Pollitt, all rights reserved