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Ah, as a fellow retiree, lazing about in somewhat easy pleasures a lot of the time, I began to worry there, Max, but by the end felt more or less at home with your shelves… Doug On Aug 19, 2015, at 8:57 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Ignorance > > All my long life, I’ve > fretted at my ignorance. > Student summers when free, > I’d start over in the library, > > sampling dictionaries, > encyclopedias > for first steps in knowledge - > universal, hopefully. > > Before history, prehistory. > Before languages, Language. > Before art history, Art. > Daunting? you bet! > > Then I learned: postpone > what’s Minor, find what’s Major. > Summer I now gave up to > Leonardo, Michelangelo, > > Russell’s (slick) History > of Western Philosophy, > Bach, Beethoven, > Brahms, Tchaikovsky. > > Shakespeare and co > were set authors each term > and looked after so. > Summers called friends > > to the beach, me > to the library. > What did I learn? > Ignorance is incurable. > > Thenceforward, cut corners, > teacher of the little I knew, > remaining a smatterer > informed by the book review. > > The books themselves > when I retired loomed > up again, threatening: > last chance, now or never. > > I lined them up: Homer, > Plato, Sophocles, Dante, > Cervantes, Gibbon, Hugo, > Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. > > They’re staring at me now. > I stare back and shrug. > How long have I got? > Treat them with severe ignore? > > After many a summer > dies the autodidact. > Some quick dipping, > skimming and skipping - > > that’s about all they’ll get. > After me, anyone’s welcome > to shelve those classics > where I didn’t begin - > > with a long strong > concentration span. Douglas Barbour [log in to unmask] Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress). Recording Dates (Rubicon Press). Done in by creation itself. I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too. The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books? We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming? Robert Kroetsch.