Words: Philip Harvey
Image: Susan Southall
Some days the world reads the
library.
There must be something more
to existence than productivity.
Bicycle down and chain it to
the signpost, a great string bag of reading due back sometime in March.
Again is the meaning of again
again is the meaning of again again again.
The world wants everything
covered between covers, streamed on screens.
The world borrows out
distraction, pretending to truth.
Surely so many books have
something one thing for this eye problem, this heart yearning, this unexplained
chaos, this link line.
Make it new, says desire.
Whatever is there in there
that I can groove to?
Turbulent collections of
voices are the life of the capital city.
Nothing much to do but return
to the thesis, first thing Friday, maddening chapter eight that depends, one
supervisor says, on a non sequitur.
Worn down years visit those bluestone
steps to the hundreds of books.
Their spines have that walked-through
walled-up look.
Some days the library reads
the world.
The library stares out at the
half-explained world, which seems largely indifferent to the library’s
existence.
People walk by with their
dogs.
Someone is doing a Matt Damon
with his mobile phone.
A boy clicks past on his ‘epic
barrel’ skateboard.
Seems, while actually the library
bides time with the readiness of an admiral, a concert pianist, a seer, a movie
producer.
The resting volumes of
phenomenology sigh with self-awareness.
The business ethics section
nods in anticipation.
The mystics smile upon so
much frantic self-interest.
Mess-up is the look in faces
reading the notices, desire for something not on offer out there, though who
knows if they’ll enter the portal.
There so many Australias, so
many Melbournes, in here looking out at change.
Make it new, says desire.
The biography gets a regular turnover
as new I’s replace former I’s and their repetitive I-problem.
Years will wear down
websites, explanations unforthcoming.
Or, whatever, just rest in one of their big chairs and enjoy
the distant voices at Circulation.
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