The Myth of Books
The way light comes into the room makes up
for what the room lacks. You’ll be visited
by a storm from the list of names of storms,
this one has been round the planet
many times and round the corner
there will be an unlit auditorium,
the musicians empty, their instruments
stirred by thought. Next door the library
will be lit, punctuation marks working
loose and each book slightly sentient,
enough to understand their contents.
They talk and learn to do small
corrections: grammar, style.
In a few months they make broad changes,
delete whole chapters, and in Fiction
remove important characters and
import them from neighbouring books.
In some cases a character travels a shelf
and has learning-experiences,
some being corrupted or seduced.
Victorian heroines arrive in later centuries,
ending up junkies, journalists, astronauts.
One rounds a novel and comes to The End
of History, which turns out to be a title.
The infection spreads to many homes
in this and in neighbouring boroughs.
A counter-attack is launched
by difficult Twentieth-Century poets
who establish a bridgehead
in modernist fiction and restore order
by flying over in a paper-plane and dropping
a fullstop big enough to punctuate the planet.
Giles Goodland lives in London, he thinks he has a book forthcoming from Salt Editions, his last book was A Spy in the House of Years, Please contact him for ordering information if you wish to purchase any of his books (all of his publishers so far have gone bust) (gilesgoodland@aol.com)