Lines written in the Dome Reading Room

Glory in the architecture

Splendour in the light

A book, pages open

A love, a journey, a fight.

 

The king is victorious

He is returning home

To his castle on the hill

Under the golden dome

 

I wish I were as lucky,

But I have no one to love

A pocket full of wheat

And a cooing turtle dove.

 

Around me centuries of books. Collected and stuffed into shelves

To be looked at and photographed by tourists.

Young women sit by their computers falling asleep,

They must study because their education is costing more money than their grandfathers ever knew.

The sun shines in through the dome; the light falls on the marble

Where etched are the words

“Glory in the architecture

 Splendour in the light.”

I sit in a timber chair and lean backwards, the chair moans

The sound echoes around the library.

I watch the nearest woman over her computer

Her black hair shines as it presses behinds her ears

I think of silk and the smell of vegetables, the names of which I have never heard.

It has been eighteen years

A lifetime for some

Yet it feels like weeks only,

That meal you made me was delicious

I ate too much and felt sick.

What I wouldn’t give to have one more night with you,

Your black hair shone like dreams,

Dreams fade.