Thursday, January 19, 2012

"The season came for rearranging shelves"


In proper order, comforting our minds
With “here for history,” and “here one finds
The poetry.”

                        To keep books straight themselves
We classified them thus:  The history
Is statement of authentic facts
Swaying a pendulum: directed acts
That grow as long as men slave to be free.

And poetry is what’s inside those men,
A story of the growth of startled feeling
From start to finish. Words are a glass revealing
To our minds what eyes can only mean.

We made the sharp distinction broad; to cover
Printed words, to keep the shelves distinct.
Until our order crashed, was made extinct;
Could not produce the book most true to lover.

Helen Halsey
August | 1937

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