----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 6:59 PM
Subject: Library &/or Art Class poem(s) ??
>A request!
> I am leading a "Walking & Writing" Class on the University of San
> Francisco Campus. We have upcoming 'writing' visits in the Library's Rare
> Book room and a Sculpture workshop. Does one have any 'favorite' work
> which sites itself in a Library or in an Art Workshop?? (This one is
> actually for 'sculpture' students).
>
> Some eons ago, frequently lit mags would have a poem (or story) that would
> take place in a bookshop. (I think those situations between the speaker
> and the romantic 'sought' among the stacks have been replaced by eHarmony
> or comparable date making sites! Or maybe the NYRB). Not to rule out the
> romantic in any of these situations, but I welcome any kind of poem with
> this kind of specific location. (I often suffer from 'aphasia' when it
> comes to remembering specific poems)
>
> (I have not read Larkin in a long time, but he must have something of the
> Library, yes?)
> Your suggestions much appreciated.
>
> Stephen V
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
>
In the Reading Room of the British Museum
by George Faludy
translated from the Hungarian by Eric Johnson
Beside me sits an aged woman in
a housecoat, wearing dirty tennis-shoes
(it's winter now) and shabby woollen stockings,
all neatly tied with string and safety-pins.
At lunch time as I eat roast beef I watch
her count out six-pence for a mug of tea
then choose a fag-end from a tin and smoke.
She's spent the morning reading cuneiform,
a codex without notes, wtihout translation.
At quarter to nine each morning I wait
beneath the columns for the doors to open.
The regulars are there already, come
on foot from dreary rooms in Bloomsbury.
That's where they eat and live on God knows what:
don't ask, because for once that's not the question.
The aged woman, and the long-haired boy
who seeks the Cathari in Provencal
for their magnificence, the red-faced man
who's wrestled fifty years with Abelard.
Gradually I've come to recognize them all.
These are my people though I'm from a land
where no one tolerates a man who tries
to save himself. I envy them and feel
ashamed: they study but they don't take notes
as I do, scribbling here, my publisher's
pathetic cheque already in the bank.
They are my tribe, a tribe condemned to death.
Every day's their holiday, and Sundays
they sit alone amidst a paradise
of renaissances, small beacons in a world
where renaissances occur in books alone.
An unknown god has been their host on earth
and spread a blue Sarouk beneath their feet;
they've built a crystal cloister for themselves
where factory whistles never sound, and money
never talks - where silence hovers over worth.
And one day on their deathbeds they'll sit up
and know in silence what a billion men
will never know: that, living, they were alive.
London, 1967
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