A Response Poem

This is a response to The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges


Alphabetical

The extent to which the book extends
is bound within its cover and stretches
through the vaunted halls of mind cathedrals
in signs and codes.

The book whose spine
follows the circle of library walls
is God - according to Borges -
and spins circles through space.

The space between books on shelves
in the library,
any library at any time,
remains a universal constant
over which a librarian has no control.

This page, a leaf that turns through cycles.
These letters, catalogue of scrawl on the toilet wall
by those who seek light
as they travel down rows of shelves,
neatly filed volumes dissolving into atoms
of information
transmogrified,
transmittable via brainwaves
anatomical cables bridge from print to thought.

A conversation with God,
with gods of words in ceremonial procession
covering page after page,
alphabetically,
systematically
coordinated page and word.

Titles by authors long dead,
the scarecrow straw and stuff of their heads.
'Oh time thy pyramids,
thy labyrinth of letters'
how we scramble and climb
through their thorns and dust
for meaning
and find only the beauty of symbols,
a simulacrum of beauty.
We search now for alternatives
through spaces, silences, the narratives unwritten.

How long have we stumbled uncomprehending,
and who writes the findings of the search,
the narratives of the searchers?

Is there, somewhere, a writer penning words
in slanting gold calligraphy ...
'In the beginning the word was ...'