The library has borders,
books are fenced defence,
defiance and his shelter.
Sentences are bulwark,
sentinels against
the ignorance
of those not
yet enlightened.
He believes in castles
swords protecting this —
his world of words.
But the aged librarian has forgotten:
if you fence the freedom,
if you pull the drawbridge to protect your books
you will cross another border
of being literary illiterate.
Walls in Spain by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
A second contribution to Grace’s prompt on borders at dVerse.
—
August 22, 2017
Words can be like fences. If taken too literally they avoid the need for subjective reading and interpretation.
Excellent point!
Burn the library at Alexandria and you have oblivion.
Burn the library in Babylon and you have eternity.
Very deep.
A twist on the borders of literacy and illiteracy Bjorn ~ Both sides need to be open, and allow for questions and freedom ~ Love your perspective ~
Do you remember a bookstore called Borders? Haha. Access to literacy should not have such barriers. Always enjoy your literary melodies. Do you enjoy reading live? I miss the open mic days of my twenties. 🙂
Interesting to think of a library with fences.
BTW: The library HAS borders.
books open the gateway.. borders withhold
Love your aged librarian pieces
Ah! The return of the ancient librarian! Welcome back! Yes, the library HAS borders, but the imagination does not, and the ‘fenced defence’, bulwark and sentinels are also the gateway to other worlds – a wonderful paradox!
Boxed in by language itself.
Interesting, over the last few poems, when I make grammar suggestions, you do not change the mistakes. My bad, I will stop offering.
I will just ignore them like others kindly do.
I just didn’t have the time to go back to edit my poem… a lot of my poems are drafts…
Your first comment said, “this is and example of what I wanted to do as an intentional grammar “error””. I am glad you erased that — hard to imagine. But I understand that you don’t want to change your ‘drafts’ — I always change mine with help of readers when I like the thought. Since you don’t I will hold those sort of comments in the future.
Fine
“literary illiterate”. Wow. What a perspective. My regards to the aged librarian. 😉