IN THE LIBRARY (BEFORE IT BURNED DOWN)
He was in the library
when he
suddenly wasn’t.
I was
pretty sure of this
almost sure of this
as sure as anyone
in their right mind could be’\
as
sure
as sure can be.
Must have
torn something
accidentally along its perforated
or jagged edge
something bad:
am no ways a neurophysiologist
but something in the mindset
must account
for his disappearance
not as if
forces unknown and invisible
secretly rushed in
created a diversion and
then
simply whisked he away.
Charms too
there are, lots of them,
powerful ones,
that go back to a time
most ancient, most ancient,
some of them
to be found here especially
in the pages of this play
whose name
dare not be mentioned, must be
sign-languaged, not spoken,
written
six centuries ago
by the Shakespeare who
might not be correct Shakespeare at all.
So thought
I would
take a brief timeout, learn how
to philosophize
in heroic couplets
produce the all-new, revamped,
Popeian Essay on Man
revised to
factor in
Einstein,
Hawking,
Lacan,
Kristeva and Foucault
but put that
on hold
because news suddenly broke
of his possible whereabouts
(who? you ask: answer
he of whom
we had been talking)
apparently now eye-witness seen
skipping from
stack to stack
tunnelling
through walls
like one, as it were, who
is horribly drunk after
imbibing much sub-
atomic theory
turned revolutionary in behaviour purely
in Classical physical terms
but not as yet —
in fact way of —
developing any
critique of power and of property
deploying a dialectical or other
class-
antagonism theory
dutifully adapted to
local sub-Saharan context
if not
explicitly
the country that burst
in to much violent life
around
the Witwatersrand reef
yes,
nothing here socio-politically radical, or
breakthrough economic
to challenge all the ideas with which
what is accepted as our reality is perpetually reinforced;
ideology
turning into concrete
on an
obvious daily basis
killing all hope
of alternative
shooting down
any strangely possible
or crazily pending
transformatively different world
which would leave
our poets and writers
trailing behind
in the distance
like jetsam
like debris
like ash
after a fire
once, per climate or
otherwise,
the library
has burned down
all the books are gone.