How you loved to read in the snow and when your
face turned to water from the internal heat
combined with the heavy crystals or maybe it was
reversus you went half-blind and your eyelashes
turned to ice the time you walked through swirls
with dirty tears not far from the rat-filled river
or really a mile away—or two—in what
you came to call the Aristotle room
in a small hole outside the Carnegie library.
 
Copyright © 2010 by Gerald Stern. Used with permission of the author.

Poems by This Author

The Preacher [As if the one tree you love] by Gerald Stern
As if the one tree you love so well and hardly
Apocalypse by Gerald Stern
Of all sixty of us I am the only one who went
Counting by Gerald Stern
Day of Grief by Gerald Stern
I was forcing a wasp to the top of a window
Death By Wind by Gerald Stern
Glut by Gerald Stern
The whole point was getting rid of glut
Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye by Gerald Stern
Every city in America is approached
Magnolia by Gerald Stern
The mayor, in order to marry us, borrowed
My Sister's Funeral by Gerald Stern
Since there was no mother for the peach tree we did it
Sylvia by Gerald Stern
The Dancing by Gerald Stern
In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
The Sparrow by Gerald Stern
Here’s a common sparrow, a bit of a schnorrer


Further Reading

Poems about Libraries
Chance
by Molly Peacock
In the Library
by Charles Simic
My First Memory (of Librarians)
by Nikki Giovanni
The Congressional Library [excerpt]
by Amy Lowell
The Libraries Didn't Burn
by Elaine Equi
Poems about Reading
After Reading Lao Tzu
by Amy Newlove Schroeder
Book Loaned to Tom Andrews
by Bobby C. Rogers
Burning of the Three Fires
by Jeanne Marie Beaumont
Forgetfulness
by Billy Collins
Hans Reading, Hans Smoking
by Liam Rector
How to Read a Poem: Beginner's Manual
by Pamela Spiro Wagner
Learning to Read
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Light By Which I Read
by Eric Pankey
Love For This Book
by Pablo Neruda
My First Memory (of Librarians)
by Nikki Giovanni
One Train May Hide Another
by Kenneth Koch
Passerby, These are Words
by Yves Bonnefoy
Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet
by Tony Hoagland
Reading Novalis in Montana
by Melissa Kwasny
Shawl
by Albert Goldbarth
Stet Stet Stet
by Ange Mlinko
The Author to Her Book
by Anne Bradstreet
The Best Thing Anyone Ever Said About Paul Celan
by Shane McCrae
The Land of Story-books
by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Reader
by Richard Wilbur
The Secret
by Denise Levertov
There is no frigate like a book (1263)
by Emily Dickinson
To the Reader
by Jena Osman
To the Reader: If You Asked Me
by Chase Twichell
Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life]
by Bruce Smith
Why I Am Afraid of Turning the Page
by Cate Marvin
You Begin
by Margaret Atwood