Hulled down down haulage in amaze
– check titles, take stock, scan shelves –
all up put out and in exceeding maze
– inspect each copy, skim the reads –
all in wonder all in morning mist
– glance at, flick them, spot the swaps –
all wandering all evening all amaze.
You’ve switched my books. You’ve
purloined. Plainly. Is it possible? Is’t
possible you rank abused my hospitality,
that you attempted such inelegant offence?
O royal knavery of ghastly bugs and goblins!
All subscribed, impressed, placed safely back;
all the changelings never known, unguessed. Till now.
Your happy hypocrites, these savage detectives,
have made their stealthy stacked assault, their
book attacks and hijackings to finger every packet
(and what books did these desperate men desire?).
I should charge you, bill you, hook you,
bless you, blow by hundred bamboo blows,
and break your inky blocks by blocks!
Where has my Hamlet gone along the Relativ Index?
He’s run from 822.3 to 098 to sit among
prohibited books, forgeries, hoaxes.
Pamflets, notes, scrap books, index rerums move
out along the displaced decimals: 383
should be postal communication. But not of late.
Each faceted classification, cutter-numbered,
confound confused: no games of chance
at 795; no pulp and paper in the place;
no stars left among 500s; and 216 no longer used
(formerly Evil); 217 unassigned (formerly Prayer);
157 empty, formerly emotions; formerly will;
not assigned in astronomy; an unassigned arithmetic.
What kind of hollow library have you left me?
What kind of vacant texts are left?
How can I trust my own dear diaries? How
can I credit it or invest in each impression each
amended edition edit edit each repunctuated
unpaginated blank blank page? Rescriptus:
scratched and scraped again again. Sa sa sa.
Such nerve, such under new hand practice
to smooth reuse the washed and waxy pages,
wiping out and out my trivial fond recordings.
Here are my codices with biscuit crumbs
in the gathers, specks of hot milk, flecks of bran
engrained among the folded leaf of all of
all my recommended recommanded readings.
You’ve erased – with repress and press – my tables;
retabulated all my bookish saws, all forms, all pressures
of proofs past and, by the uproots, pulled out
my base book. My sheer volume
is set back down, fainting from the worn paths
that eager youth and observation copied there.
And this is, this was, too true of all those from the ships.
Now bare memory bare recalls the feigned tract
of preformer and/or inferior original scripts.
I cannot trace me in my mark, and find my trailing
foot step dragged drawn and trained off crawling
course. You’ve remedied my mark,
made yours: of those of those of those. Sa sa.
Whose are these stranger fictions? And, who he?
Slowly though, slowly I recall and recollect:
a library without lenders – unrisked, inviolate –
a book unread – reserved from passage,
out of communication, incommunicado – would
enter lockdown, hot-boxed, cool solitary heel in hole.
So the Pelican Bay plexiglass on my supermax shelving
should dissolve itself into a dew, resolved by you.
So, go on, please handle all items with loving care
(both old and new). Touch and handle collection items
as much as possible. Only carry what you can’t easily
hold. Stack up books, one on another. Place them
up side down. Use special weight to hold
hold pages. Please note: collection items should never
never be returned. And copying? copying is so so charged.
So catch up in the drift bite down the bait and hook
to tell the interfering bitter fish go fuck his feedback
loops loops deny his affective influence rat-a-tat
don’t long long to redeliver perfume lost rat-a-rat.
Always a borrower always a lender be. Soft you now:
these were rich gifts rich pickings. So steal away.
Keep sucking bright honey from the vow. Steal away
all those from my ships.