There is a section in my library for death <br />and another for Irish history, <br />a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan, <br />and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books, <br />the ones you can turn to anytime, <br />when the night is going wrong <br />or when the day is full of empty promise. <br /> <br />I have nothing against <br />the thin monograph, the odd query, <br />a note on the identity of Chekhov's dentist, <br />but what I prefer on days like these <br />is to get up from the couch, <br />pull down The History of the World, <br />and hold in my hands a book <br />containing nearly everything <br />and weighing no more than a sack of potatoes, <br />eleven pounds, I discovered one day when I placed it <br />on the black, iron scale <br />my mother used to keep in her kitchen, <br />the device on which she would place <br />a certain amount of flour, <br />a certain amount of fish. <br /> <br />Open flat on my lap <br />under a halo of lamplight, <br />a book like this always has a way <br />of soothing the nerves, <br />quieting the riotous surf of information <br />that foams around my waist <br />even though it never mentions <br />the silent labors of the poor, <br />the daydreams of grocers and tailors, <br />or the faces of men and women alone in single rooms- <br /> <br />even though it never mentions my mother, <br />now that I think of her again, <br />who only last year rolled off the edge of the earth <br />in her electric bed, <br />in her smooth pink nightgown <br />the bones of her fingers interlocked, <br />her sunken eyes staring upward <br />beyond all knowledge, <br />beyond the tiny figures of history, <br />some in uniform, some not, <br />marching onto the pages of this incredibly heavy book.<br /><br />William Taylor Collins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tomes-2/
