In the Library’s rare book room, when
the lost book of hours opens, a crimson
daub flecks the recto. Painted goldfish and
bees crack apart, sending slivers of color
to the books gutter.
………………………………..How quickly they
sift away—chips of paint from a medieval
book once held to the breast of a noblewoman
pausing for private devotionals, her fingers
tracing daisies and toads and the feathered
backbones of angels.
………………………………..The monk who
adorned these pages must have sat with his
mixing pot and goose quills, brilliant lazuli,
shaved gold—the tools he daily used—his careful
work building a kind of trust between his time
and ours.
………………………………..But when the codex
is closed and we leave at days end, book rust
on our hands despite cotton gloves, sun catches
the railing and shoots blanks toward us. Even
the steering wheel seems a hot reproach as we
rip away, scattering debris.
What damage we sometimes do!
Tomorrow, the book will be sent
for preservation, as if newly ground lapis
could match layered blue or serve again
to cure melancholy, as it was once said to do.
Patricia Gray, author of Rupture: Poems, previously directed the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center. Her poems have appeared most recently in The Louisville Review, The Tower Journal online, Ekphrasis, and District Lines Anthology. She has been a panelist at the Associated Writing Programs national conference and a judge for the national Poetry Out Loud competition for high school students sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and Poetry. She is a recipient of an Artist Fellowships in Poetry from DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, honorable mention in the Ann Stanford National Poetry competition, and was a semi-finalist for the New Millennium Poetry Prize. Gray attended Bread Loaf Writers Conference in 2004, where she studied with Evan Boland. Her MFA in creative writing is from the University of Virginia, where she won the Academy of American Poets Prize. To read more by this author: Patricia Gray: Whitman Issue Patricia Gray: Fall 2005 Patricia Gray: DC Places Issue