Infinite Library

 

In the dusty caverns of an infinite library 

that does not exist

I search for you 

I run along the pages of Austin and Bronte 

and barge through Flaubert 

Yet I don’t find you,

                                      unsurprisingly.

 

We are different 

I find you in the section marked

“Spectres”

occupied by a lonely copy of Derrida 

Indeed you haunt me 

And I’m disgusted to find you

more in Jung and Freud 

than in the great romantics 

 

We run hand in hand

through the infinite library that doesn’t exist

We share our first kiss in the innocence

of childhood 

Then fuck in Tudor history 

I make love to you, then kill you 

In Sophocles 

Then resurrect you and hold you tenderly 

Wrapped in the words of Lawerence

 

We embrace yet again 

In Steinbeck’s Californian desert 

All the while 

Still running 

 

I want to stay here forever with you 

rolling over the planes of letters

emblazoned with meaning 

I want to plunge into the archives

and return empty handed

but with pockets full of soviet propaganda 

where I am a Russian child 

And you are Stalin with a septum piercing and tits.