Books: A Revision

The old public library has bricks outside
and books inside. Perhaps there’s a brick
for every book. I haven’t read all the books
or counted all the bricks. There’s no reason
for counting bricks, but it’s the kind of thing
that certain people do: a patient in a waiting room
counting ceiling tiles, or a convict counting flecks
in cinder blocks, having counted already
all the cinder blocks themselves. And the bars:
beneath counting, but each one named
and fondled daily. Do the flecks stay still?
An insect might impersonate one, or a thrown object
might give rise to previously-nonexistent flecks.
Such a number might be, as it increases,
as vivid and dramatic as a movie. I hope
I never know. As for books, I’ve met people
who can make you think they’ve read
every single book in the library. It’s a trick,
I’m sure: a melding of personality
with the surrounding intellectual mood.
Perhaps they’re like convicts in a larger cell –
this present day, this world –  and only
such superior minds can see the walls,
and know that measuring time is counting
every fleck. I’ve made lists of books
and worked my way proudly through them all:
such an effort turns books into bricks.
I once knew a writer whose apartment
was furnished mainly with books: some arranged
as tables, stacked books with opened books
upon them. I buy books faster than I read them;
perhaps half by now of what I own
I’ve never even read. But it’s comforting
to know the books are there, waiting,
perhaps speaking silently to each other:
four walls of books collected through a lifetime,
many with random photographs-as-bookmarks
in them, or notes (my own and previous owners’),
or receipts from all the bookstores in all the towns
I’ve been to, most of those stores long closed,
since many people these days are as likely
to count bricks as they are to read a book.

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...resulting from my usual next-day regret of bloat, and in particular, of unnecessary documentary detail...