The Library of Alexandria

What could I have known about my density,

Or the bondage holding every sinew,

The elemental constitution

Carving me through the air,

If nothing within these striking beams of light

Pouring through a corner window

Would break on me this Sunday morning?

Like its namesake, I had sought to build

In the sanctum of every page within

These halls, the marble acropolis—

And the faces cast in every corner;

Like that which shimmered above the palms

On the shores of Alexandria—

From the dust among these pages.

I had known, once, how the sun broke through

The glass and through the leaves

Of this budding oak as joyously

As that which warmed the Mediterranean,

On whom the ancients mirrored

Their intellectual light, and sought

Elucidation from

The constant ray of every word

Each mind had fused upon its page.

And in this air, how clearly I smelled

The sweat of eons, basking in the dust

And the mold rising between the sullen words.

And knew the icons I had sought

Were carved in this housed atmosphere

As clearly as the caryatids

Who watched their muse, and subtly held

The golden spheres in place.

But what could I have known about my density?

Less dense, it seems, than the air—

This air, for whom years among the dust

Have granted still Sunday mornings

Where she, a canvas, learned to catch

These rays of intellect—I break

Like the fading spray of a northern sea,

Ephemeral as the words pass by

As faintly as the wind.