vanity

I printed this for a co-worker this weekend and then thought maybe I should post it here... It is possible I will change my mind and take it down, but for now...

I wrote this poem in 1999 as part of an assignment to write a Whitman-esque poem for one of my favorite professors ever, Duke Rank. Not *too* shabby, I think...

Democracy

1.

Just before midnight, air sultry, heavens dark,
The key turns in the lock, alarms are disarmed, and the young woman enters,
Walks in to a place where anything can happen,
Anything or nothing, be it as she pleases.

Oh library! Great democracy and endless possibility live within your walls!
On your shelves, in your rooms, live the greatest minds the world has known,
Side by side with the most vacuous.
Oh catalogue of cards! Within your drawers the map contain’d, the key to the world beyond.

Eschewing cards (for she has been here before, has lived in Buildings similar, has visited other great libraries in Stratford and Checaugo, in Concord and the City of Calumet),
She saunters down an aisle, marveling at the wonderful democracy, the overwhelming collection of what is held within.


2.

On this shelf, a whale (vast, white, evil) and a cat in from the rain.
On this shelf, a curious little monkey, a duck family walking through Boston, a bear without a button.
On this shelf, Kings (Stephen and Dr. and Henry the Eighth) and renegades side by side, wait in silence, ready for all.
On this shelf, wise men and dreamers keep company with those not as wise, those whose dreams would destroy, Henry David and Ralph Waldo as well as Benito and Adolph.
(And yes, dear Bronson, you, too, have a place here, are welcome and respected here as you were not always as you lived.)
Hemingway, fresh from safari, ruddy and masculine and confident, drink in hand, lovely girl child on his arm, ready to regale with tales of his exploits in Africa or Cuba,
What have you to say to Germaine Greer? What ideas to share? What abuse to hurl?
And you, Aristotle, toga-clad sage, what words have you for DeCartes and Kant, for Nietszche?


3.

Idealist and cynic!
Poet and Anti-poet!
Pacifist and Warmonger!
Men of science! Impractical dreamers!
Child (innocent and not so innocent) and Adult (innocent and not so innocent)!
Crucified Genius and Poisonous Trendsetter!
Together here, in this great democracy,
Home to dreams! To practicality! To science! To abstract ideals!
(And yes, home, too, to hate and intolerance and those who should have smote you, Walt Whitman, had they been able.)


4.

And you, Walt Whitman, nestled close to Emily,
(Nearby, your children, Ginsberg and Hughes, Ferlinghetti and Pound – for he, too, is your son, try as he might to deny –
Nearby, they slumber, content to be counted among those who came after.
Are you satisfied with this fruit, with these sons of yours?)
Full in the knowledge that your life has, at last, been recorded and recorded again, has been examined and analyzed and sung and celebrated as you knew it should be,
Are you, Walt Whitman, satisfied? Worried no longer that “proud libraries” shall shut their doors to you? Smug in the way they order each new edition, each new biography, needing to make you a part of them?


5.

She closes her eyes and envisions the morrow.
There, in the corner, the old old man, eyes weary, tears on cheek, reliving his war, his boyhood,
There, at the table, a strong father smiles gently at the pig-tailed head bent over her reader, sounding out the words carefully,
There, the chubby blonde toddler teethes on Thoreau as her harried mother finishes her homework,
There, the pregnant teen, frightened, alone, speaks softly to the librarian, desperately ashamed, pleading for help,
There, the surly young man, eyes hooded, countenance dark, pushes the poetry book across the counter, pretends it is for school,
There, by the bathrooms, the homeless couple waits (he, working a crossword puzzle, she, napping without fear),
At the next table, the new grandfather learns to sound out his words, careful as the pig-tailed child, hoping to surprise them all, to read his grandson a story.

All these she sees as she closes her eyes in the dim room.
She sees them and she smiles, knowing that all are welcome here, all offered here,
that here, ever and always, a true democracy exists.