Forgotten Library
Alone in the midnight city.
Wind swirls paper and grit at my feet.
I enter the unmarked storefront, its door
blank, windows sightless with dust.
Closing the latch behind me, I feel the inner
dark press in, though only for a moment—
a light grows gradual as moonrise
to reveal shadowed rows of bookshelves.
Here surrounded by these waste streets,
in a room plain and raw as a corncrib,
disdained by thieves, glows the harvest
yield of human thought and feeling…
Thus I find myself returned to a place
of sought-for abundance glimpsed long
ago, as now, in dreams…which, once
some magic bookseller’s shop, has become
a secret library. Though unknown to
the world and forgotten sometimes even
by myself, it has remained here for me,
standing through the years unlocked and safe.