The Book Fair
The Book Fair
for Emma
smelt of mould, foxed paper, wet Barbours,
a melange of musts that kept me near sneezing,
threatening to shatter the reverent susurrus
of shuffling browsers, the mutters and whispers,
the rustle of pages being caressed apart.
I dithered over Decline and Fall, a Life of Yeats,
Five Centuries of Ballads and Broadsheets,
avoiding the sellers’ eyes, but decided no,
remembering your shelves of the second-,
third- and fourth-hand, my nose wrinkling in reflex.
What was best was walking there and back,
how you turned to smile up at me
from under your fake fur hat,
the Cossack calpac, sugared by the sleet
so that it seemed like a black pastille.
You made me feel like some illiterate uhlan, in love
with the daughter of the town academy’s librarian.
You were taking me to see your father’s tower,
its stock of thesauri, Psalters and incunabula
as vast and disciplined as the Emperor’s Horse.
Paul Lee
(1952 – 2011)
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