First House

[mythomanic]

First House

At home my shelves falter
beneath the weight of books. Already I've given
my childhood to the wolves. I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll
blow your house down. I'd like a library
with stronger foundations. Hey, let's you and me
combine our collections, cobble one together. You know
as well as I do how it feels, to be a slope-shouldered
hasty stack of hay, falling apart at the seams, or the camel
struggling under its load, blundering into the desert as surely
as our bedraggled god shouldered his cross. In that desert we'll find
the library at Alexandria, read until the words run
into each other, run among the words as like pigeons or dollarbills
they scatter into the air. Now that we've wandered
so far, leaving our gods behind, all that's left
to worship is each other. Let's build us a dirty
church, stacked like Borges' libraryrinth, books spiralling
like that old tower. There'll even be a place
for the old stories: the witch, the leviathan, the blood-
red star. Read me this poem, my dear. In bed we'll lay down
our foundation. My linch-pin. My break-back straw.