| Personal Library After Graduation The stacks of fine books have stood since the day they last were disturbed and opened by hands; their owner's dull gaze ensures all is there and ever again before them he stands. The physics books sit together with French, their covers stay shut, and no one asks why a vast wealth of knowledge sits on wood shelves just gathering dust as time passes by. In Search of Lost Time and War and Peace, too, and other great classics he'd had to read; his mind was well-spent, at least in his youth, despite a dull end, a once hopeful seed. No need for more study, he must have decided since twenty years old, he knew what to think; no longer the words from books did he need: James Joyce was a bore and Freud just a shrink. And then one gray day about fifteen years hence while standing he read ten pages of Paine; he found it worthwhile and marked his new place but never returned to read it again. Back to Home Back to Poems |