The splendour of shutting up
The Reading Room, Barr
Smith Library, University of Adelaide
The beauty of closed lips, that thin black line.
A stampede of words pauses behind it, yet
in this library, they wait. The courage of
choosing silence! Outside, the quiet
are damned as superior or stupid
and noise is righteous company.
Yet here, in this magnificent room
the virtue of hushed text flourishes.
We sit together but dwell worlds apart,
tongues reclining on their damp couches,
looking through the windows of other souls
without any obligation to remark upon the décor.
What a great poem. I love: tongues reclining on their damp couches - and that sense of solitude and silence and comfort that you get in a library.
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ReplyDeleteHow wonderful! Our local public library long ago ceased being noise-free. I miss the lovely silence.
ReplyDeleteAnd the line before the tongues. And the first line. You take me right into the midst of your library silence
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