by Anita Lerek
 |
“The Lost Library Forest,” a painting by Luis Peres |
Mother, how much time is left
for us in the forest library,
where master spines
clasp woody pages
pollinated by wind?
How much time before
the boxing up, the clearing out
of minds meshed in ancient tree lives:
now inventory, cubic footage,
caged, trucked away—
to bonfires staged by haters.
1933, Berlin: Cigarettes,
chocolate, sausages for sale!
To music and spotlights
some 50,000 books burn.
Burn the texts, said Artaud.
Did he yearn for another heaven
to leave scripts of cruelty
far behind?
I cry for you, Mother,
stroke keys for you.
Something must be saved here
of your wounded spines… words.
How memory’s flesh burns.
Wind, carry my voice without a voice—
tell the trees that she, I—
Author’s Note: Homage to the thought of Edmond Jabes (The Book of Questions), and to the poem by Don Pagis, "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car."
Anita Lerek has spent her adult life juggling business with the enchantment of poetry. The visual arts, jazz, and social justice are life-long influences. Born abroad (Poland), she retains a sense of otherness, and a resulting affinity for the divergent. Her poems have appeared recently in Poetry Super Highway, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and River Heron. She is co-founder of Change Artists, a start-up online poetry community relating to political engagement. She is the author of a chapbook, History and Being (2019). She lives with her archivist husband in Toronto, Canada.