THE LIBRARY

LIZZI HAWKINS

 

 

THE LIBRARY

 

migrates to the city, and nobody

asks any questions. It spreads out

through a hundred different places,

appearing when it wants to, and where:

 

in shops, on car seats, even in your own home,

volumes materialising under your hands

in the morning, when you reach for fruit,

or your keys, from the shelf.

 

Soon, it is happening everywhere –

Orlando is found on the doorstep

by a father starting the school run,

The Hobbit appears in Primark, under

a stack of blue, and crisply folded, jeans.

 

They say the librarian moves in mysterious ways,

so we cannot predict his patterns – we just learn

to take the element of surprise into our lives.

 

Once a drunk boy claims to have found

a diary in his own handwriting, slipped

between the slatted stairs of a bar,

and we could almost believe him.

 

The librarian communicates sparsely,

via postcards slipped between the pages.

He says: “I’ll be this way if I want to.

 

Don’t tell me that you know what,

or who, you need.”

 

 

Records for Lizzi Hawkins