Books as such have lost their meaning
in an electronic age. But to the lonely
child I was, they were the truest friends.
At night, a meagre light to read by;
no playmates next door by day -
spiritual isolation; birds, stars, trees
my sole companions. Nobody dropped
in for tea, everyone was far too busy,
wresting a living from an unforgiving land.
..........................So imagine my dismay
in the book fair's final phase, when told
that unsold stock would be destroyed.
All those tomes had once had homes,
readers who had loved or loathed
them, or, not finding time to read,
trustingly donated them. Clutching
volumes to my chest, Tolstoy cheek
to cheek with Freud; the Rubaiyat,
sea-shanties, dictionaries of French
and Ancient Greek; books by favourite
Russian poets nudging Coleridge
and Keats, I strove to single-handedly
avert the sacrilege.
.....................Each title has its aura;
no two copies are the same - subtle
differences reside between the lines,
not in the text; imbued, perhaps,
with other readers' moods, nuances
of my own. While this view is too
subjective - foolish and misplaced
projection - sombre thoughts kept
me awake, distressed by the unsold
books' fate. It's probable that we
waste words; not all writing deserves
praise, but I could not annihilate
such works "for lack of storage space…"
I wondered what the great said
to the not-so-great - incinerating
at the stake, what utterances were
exchanged; what phrases managed
to escape as blades of shredders
cut their swathe… "Bosie… all's
forgiven… Oscar." "Anna… never
mind… Karenin." "I don't hate…
my mother… Sigmund." What
did destruction liberate?
* * *
I read - with pain - of Mir's descent,
surprised to learn the books were
mourned - paperbacks of no great value,
easily replaced - yet they'd given
something to their readers on those
epic flights; it seemed like abandoning
old friends, when they were sacrificed…