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Bookshelf Silhouettes

Bookshelf Silhouettes

March 1, 2004 9:15 amComments are Disabled

“Books are like imprisoned souls ’till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.” —Samuel Butler

In prison, eh? Your binds are hard but brittle,
Your pages mighty but meek.
The only bar to cling to is denial;
They pass you by, glance here, glance there,
Glad not to be in your shoes, starving and cold,
Confined and unreleased, imprisoned and unfreed.

Yet they are starving, too.
So question, as you do so well, if the bars might cast their shadows
Not inwards, across the golden bumps on your spine,
But upon the bleak library carpet,
Black black black, then
An unshadowed hole where someone
Once was liberated.

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