Of Silence and Song by Dan Beachy-Quick

Author:Dan Beachy-Quick
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781571319432
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2017-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

49.

In the temporary reading room of the rare book library a man in stained glass has three faces at once. He stares out into the room where the readers read, and on either side of his face is his profile. I couldn’t see behind him, even though he’s made of glass, so I can’t be sure, but feel safe assuming, that the eyes looking forward stare also behind. It’s hard to tell if he’s some kind of monster or god; or just a man looking from side to side where passing time is caught in a single, simultaneous instant because the motion can be caught in no other way; or if, as I fear is true, his visage is demonstration to each of us sitting within the room he gazes into of the consequences of reading: another face comes into your face, and who you are is no longer your own.

I went to the library to look for what is lost, but everything in the library has been found. I hoped, in some haphazard way, to look for lines crossed out, language discarded after being called up from the mind as not right or not worthy, orphan words, or are they exiles, to gather them in these pages, and give them a home.

A séance of a kind: to ask the librarian for a name; she walks behind a door and returns carrying the voice of the dead in a box.

Every April over the course of many years Thoreau kept track of the weather. In brown ink he scrawled the observations so quickly the words outpaced the letters forming them.

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