Bookish
1 – Reading Rooms, Bodleian Library
She trails her finger down the paper slips
that fill the ancient catalogues until
she finds the books she wants, then softly sings
her way up stairs that creak like those in old
romance, to choose a chair of English oak
and wait, and read of Gamelyn and Horn
and stare through leaded windows on a view
of spires and sky that makes her catch her breath.
The young librarian with horn-rimmed specs
walks over with her order, and a note:
Shelfmark I like your books. King’s Arms at 8?
All day she sits and works. At 5.18
she scribbles Yes and as she leaves he sees
the note alight like gold leaf on his desk.
2 – Hertford College Library (Basement)
‘No students here tonight,’ she whispers in
the reference section. ‘Talk clever to me.’
Giacomo Casanova was a useless librarian.
She laughs, I smile, we peel our jackets off.
I kiss the dark below her ear. ‘Your turn.’
If you put Saturn in water it would float.
Her hands draw circles in my hair. My mouth
goes to her blouse and tooths each button free.
Some historians regard the period 1914-1945
as a twentieth-century Thirty Years’ War.
She pulls my shirt aside to trace the square
black script on my left shoulder: Silence Please.
Sunspot activity may be the primary reason
for the exquisite sound of Stradivarius violins.
The room is chill, her breath is warm across
my neck; her hair is black and smells of ink.
In a process called cold welding, two surfaces
of similar metal will strongly adhere
if brought into contact under vacuum.
With eyes and fingers, lips and tongue I start
to catalogue her creamy vellum curves.
For Elias, society is like a group of dancers.
Each individual’s gestures and movements are
synchronized, meshed with those of the others.
She reaches up behind her head and grips
the grey steel shelf (Law Journals X to Z).
‘Sublime’ comes from ‘sub-limen’ (Latin) meaning
‘up to the threshold’. The sublime makes us experience
a visceral limit, takes us beyond language, to the realm
of the groan, a wordless expression of acute pleasure.
3 – Radcliffe Camera, Bodleian Library
We have made love at every compass point
and some between, in pre- and post-work hours
on long oak tables, hard and warm, and through
the high arched windows there is sometimes sun
and sometimes rain and fog but always green.
All Soul’s, St Mary’s, Brasenose seem to turn
their backs but still blush red in the evening sky
and glow an icy blue in winter dawn.
I’ve spent so many hours in here that there’s
a space inside my head this shape, this height,
this light, where walls of books make open rooms;
so here I lie inside myself and look
at him and know that this will be the place
I will crawl back to always in my dreams.
4 – British Library (Newspapers), Colindale
They fight in whispers by the microfiche
machines, pretending it’s about how long
she works each day. He tries to make a joke
to calm her down, to jolt her eyes to their
old focus: him. ‘Why read this stuff? You’re not
a harsh-reality girl.’ Her eyes are ink.
She hisses. ‘Don’t you tell me what I am!
It’s time we put an end to this.’ And leaves.
Once home he’s unsure how he found his way
to catch the bus. He sees the battered tin
of Lapsang Tea and throws up in the sink.
Her room is dark. She sits with open eyes,
a closed book on her lap. Her belly hurts
like being kicked; she knows that this means blood.
5 – British Library, St Pancras
They wear white gloves and speak in cotton tones.
He thanks God that his colleague’s ill, so he
must bring the manuscript and sit with her
in awe of this rare thing, this ancient book
with quiet vellum leaves and square black script
and breathing pigments: red from dragonblood
and blue from azurite and grassy green
from verdigris, and gold leaf like the sun.
He finds he can exhale and then draw breath.
She finds her wooden chair is like a bed.
It might be her, or him, who looks into
a bookish face (once-loved, still young) and speaks:
Without the exquisite proximity
of you, body and brain, all words print white.
Ailsa Holland is a poet and translator. She makes the photo-poems blog ailsaandlisa with Lisa Williams, photographer: ailsaandlisa.wordpress.com