Verisimilitude

~ after Borges

Once I told myself I would not buy
another, not until I’d read

the ones I have— But how is it
that in our world, books

seem to outnumber the days,
and the days rush onward faster

than an automated teleprompter?
Once I thought I had all the time

to learn what they had to tell me—
but still I know so little.

Once I read a story where the hero
sought reprieve and in a dream,

was led to one shining letter
on a page, in a library which time

appeared to have forgotten. I know
that isn’t my story— All the same,

I wish sometimes that I might live
in that timeless interval between

the sentence as it made its way
through the rain and its final

pronouncement; for the grace to write
and fill in all the parts still missing.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Good books.

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