Open Stacks

by Brett Rutherford

Does your library

have one too?

A special kind of reader,

I mean. I thought

to ask you, as you maintain,

as we, the open-stack

philosophy that lets our patrons

roam freely from A to Z,

zero to infinity, from LOC

to the dusty old Dewey.

Free-range readers, I call them.

We treasure those visitors

who shun the computer,

turn up their nose at car catalogs.

They want to scan, to touch,

to run their fingers along

the embossed leather spines.

They crave the accident

by which a mis-shelved book

is the very one they need.

But now we have another kind —

do you have one like this?

He, or she, or they, or it,

no taller than a ten-year-old,

began at the farthest shelf

and is day-by-day reading

the whole library. Each book

comes down into a barely

visible hand; the pages flip,

so fast you can hardly see it,

then comes a sigh, and back

the inspected volume goes.

No title goes uninspected;

down on all fours below,

or stretching itself in ladder,

it is studying everything.

One day, consumed

with the thought of a prank

in the works, I walked up

in the shadowy aisle

and touched its shoulder.

"Just what are you about?"

I asked. A light flashed.

I found myself standing

three blocks away,

behind a dumpster.

And so I write to you,

and to a few others

I feel safe to inquire of:

are you invaded, too?

How far has it read?

What happens to us all

when they reach the end

and have yet to find

the reason for our existence?

Awaiting your reply,

I tremble.

The Librarian's Lament

Callimachus was the head of the Great Library at Alexandria.
I expanded a tiny epigram to let him boast a little about his day job.

THE LIBRARIAN’S LAMENT

by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Callimachus, Epigram 34

“But you haven’t any money.”
What kind of bedroom talk is that?
Listen Menippus, in the name of gods
and the Graces, don’t talk that way.
Would you tell me my own dreams
or blow my breath back into
my nostrils? It’s not as though
my purse had nothing in it
but nail clippings and navel lint.

I am the one in charge, the one
you ask questions of, when you
come begging for wisdom
at the library’s high desk.
And not just any library,
mind you, the Big One.

Here in the great city
of the Ptolemies,
every living author knows me,
solicits my help
in finding rare manuscripts.
I alone know
where everything is.

All Alexandria honors me
as author already
of some seven hundred
works. Does that seem poor
to you. By narrow bed
and simple furniture
you dare to judge me?

You do not tell the lame
they are crippled, or say
to the blind man, “Look here!”
It’s just that bitter to me
to have my lack of wealth
thrown back at me,
as though I had shamed
my ancestors. How crude,
and how unworthy.

Wake up in joy
in the bed you fell into,
with the one who will have you,
or do not wake at all!

   

The Girl on the Library Steps

by Brett Rutherford

Out I came from the double-door,

arms full of science-fiction adventures,

squinting to see the steep steps downward,

and there she was, rail-thin and shabby

like me, goggle-eyed spectacles

owling up to the library entrance.

She did not move. I squeezed past

through the street door to the leaf-blown sidewalk.

Only one book you need ever read,

her Pa told her. He slapped the Bible

against his knee, the leather binding

just like the strap he whipped her with.

Exultant I flew through the double door.

I swear it opened without my touching.

They had let me into the open stacks —

I had the principal’s note averring

that I, a lowly third-grader

could read at the 12th-grade level.

Hugged to my chest were Goethe’s Faust,

the dreamt-of Dracula at last,
and a tattered copy of Frankenstein.

And there she stood, on the third step now.

One of her shoes was not like the other.

Your cousin Gracie, she was a reader,

least till she got ideas and run away.

They found her dead, and pregnant.

Nobody here’d go to her funeral.

One book, just one book this time,

a thousand pages of delicious revenge.

Down stairs I almost levitated,

the book already open —

The Count of Monte Cristo. Had I opened

the double-glass door? I think I went

straight through like a house-ghost. Step five

was where I nearly collided with her,

the girl in the home-sewn blue calico dress,

her bare arms a patchwork of bruises.

Your Pa found those comic books

your girl-friends loaned you. He says

they’re the Devil’s work. He burned them.

One winter Saturday, Shakespeare in hand,

I bellow, “Friends, Romans, countrymen!”

from open page to the empty stairwell.

Oh, she was there in December dark,

the same dress, same mis-matched shoes.

Now that I wore glasses, too,

our vision connected in focus.

We were on the seventh step.

She stared at the book in my hand

and trembled. I told her the story

of Julius Caesar, then hurried on.

You want a card, a library card?

Your teacher says you need it?

We’ll not have you there, unsupervised.

There might be Jews and Catholics.

Library card! Next thing you know

you got some card says you’re a Communist!

“Intelligences vast, cool, and unsympathetic” —

I rolled the words on my tongue as I left

the library with The War of the Worlds.

Martians, oh, let the Martians come!

And here, on the uppermost step,

I was nose to nose with the girl again.

I could smell stern soap, and vinegar.

Her blond hair was braided to strangulation.

I held the door open to let her in.
She did not move. She trembled.

“I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t.”

I never saw her again.