Émigré Library; Calendars

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• by
• Boris Dralyuk

Émigré Library
 
Our library is open, but for whom?
The ranks of the expired far outnumber
these half-blind holdouts hobbling through the room.

Surely our yellowed labels all spell doom
in letters too few learn, too few remember.
Our library is open, but for whom?

They don’t disturb our poets’ mildewed gloom
or rouse our Realists from their dreamless slumber,
these half-blind holdouts hobbling through the room.

What do we hope for? Someone to exhume
a priceless birchbark from our heaps of lumber?
Our library is open, but for whom?

We know their scent (that deafening perfume)
and preference (always romance, nothing somber),
these half-blind holdouts hobbling through the room—

just as we know the posture they assume
when they first enter: straight-backed, unencumbered.
Our library is open, but for whom?
These half-blind holdouts hobbling through the room.
 
 
Calendars
 

 
One to a cell, some thirty to a block,
they spend long hours staring at the clock,

while all their constant motions and appeals
go nowhere, nowhere, and their three square meals

are left untouched. There’s simply no relief
for these dead enders at the Château d’If.

And so they do their time, their months of yearning.
Turn a new leaf . . . A new leaf turning . . .

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