To the Unreader

It is night – you are alone. Find a library
and do not read. Cracks against the cold.
The hourglass looks so full still. In the
school lavatory. I know it’s you. I know
your face in the dark. You fill out
another form. You’re on hold, looking
at the form, trying to answer questions
you barely understand. Keep still.

§
Read the birds. The policeman’s eyes
narrow when he meets your gaze. Read
the gravel in the tracks. The bus driver
asks to see your ticket. Read the asphalt
cracks. The administrator denies your
request. Except for the mirrors, the
walls are white. Don’t love what you
hate. They tell you to try harder. I won’t
leave you.

§
The windows are sparkling from last
night’s rain. A letter arrives. You move
to the kettle. The pages wait in a sheaf.
Who knows who will find them. You
gather crumbs of tea and let them rain
into the waste bin. Have you said
goodbye? You will die in twelve days.
Faces hover in the air like the peal of
bells. Keep still, keep still. Deliberately,
you avoid the hourglass. The soft sift of
sand is so high the sound is invisible.

§
You’re going somewhere, or going
nowhere. Winter numbs your hands.
You leaf through thrillers, best-sellers,
books about politics. A sticker says:
love is love. Tinfoil gathers at the bus
stop bench. A pigeon picks its way
across your path. A church bell reminds
you more time has passed. You begin to
learn when libraries are open. Look, I’ll
build a space out of language. Now
there’s a chair: sit down. Let cracks
accumulate. Gold fills this hourglass.
Take a ballpoint pen that you found,
cracked, at the library.

§
Find a chapel and do not pray. Find a
garden and do not tend it. Find a
museum and wait in the foyer. The
intimacy of nightfall is ours. A ball of
string of an unknown length – only the
knowledge that its length is finite. Keep
still, keep still. I’ll light candles. You
needn’t understand.

Sylee Gore is poetry editor at the Oxford Review of Books. Her artist’s book, Even Still, is published by Sampson Low. Her work has been awarded the Bird in Your Hands Prize, judged by Raquel Gutiérrez, and the Lord Alfred Douglas Memorial Prize, given by the University of Oxford’s English Faculty. She translates from the German for museums, publishers, and artists.