I think I can safely assure you that the Editor and I will not be on speaking terms for quite a few days yet. Even so, here I sit, bellowing ‘post! post! It’s nearly midnight!’ at myself in very nearly her tones. Possibly she hypnotised me during our last Hard Stare Stand-Off.
But as it is, I’ve had a long day and am fresh out of creativity. So we’ll go Dumpster Diving again, shall we? Oh yes, here’s something. How about a blank verse extravaganza?
Humanities - the British Library
High above the walls and tiers of scholars
Where ceiling meets the windows, there is blue
In streaks along the blanker surface, sun
In golden squares that stretch through afternoons
So dizzyingly out of reach. The sky
Beyond the soaring architectured space,
The reachless sky unreachable, is echoed,
As in deep water, under the white sweep,
Much as the cliffs of Dover, of the walls,
By scattered flakes of light, the reading lamps.
In one part of the Room the ceiling’s low
And glowing under a whole new Room of desks;
The pillars and the skylights are their walls,
They hang beneath the tent-like curve of ours.
The doubled hum of half a hundred people
All up at once and trailing through the reefs
Of desks, the ranks of blond and studious wood,
Becomes the hush, a peace inhabited.
The moist and bookish air in which we work
Is climate fit for paper and not us,
As sea is fit for fishes and we swim
At our own risk, exhalted by the cold
Of diving in the archive of this Earth,
A swaying mine of salt, the sunlight shafts
The only struts, and our deep thoughts as close
To heaven as horizons are, mountains
No higher nor no lower than the sea.
Flipping brilliant! Wonderfully evocative both of the place, and of the atmosphere of research. I particularly like the thought that we are invaders in the books’ natural habitat.
David
Left by David B, Singing Librarian on July 13th, 2006
Oi missus. Recycling is cheating if the task is to write something every day!
Still - better to post than not to post.
B
Left by Aphra Behn on July 13th, 2006
I wrote the first two paragraphs, didn’t I?
As poems go, it’s a bit Bernard Levin - when oh when shall we reach the end of this subclause … Anyway. Thank you David. I take it you’ve been IN the reading rooms then?
Left by Reed on July 13th, 2006
I’ve never been granted access to those hallowed halls, I’m afraid, but your poem makes me feel as though I have, hence it being jolly good (despite the long clauses). I’ve been in seminar rooms and what have you at the new BL and had a tour of the Document Supply Centre in Yorkshire, but the reading rooms are outside my own experience. That’s probably one of the reasons that I like ‘New Grub Street’ by George Gissing, as some of the ‘action’ takes place in the British Museum reading rooms!
David
Left by David B, Singing Librarian on July 14th, 2006