The library can not provide a useful thought
We seek structures, process, target, goal.
Maze be damned, your books are naught
but dreams, let numbers rule & take control.
So burn its books, and blast the halls,
replacing texts with streets and malls.
A palinode referring back to my previous poem about the magic of the library. Celebrating the Tell a lie day, today April 4th you should not trust what I say.
I am not sure that I truly followed the challenge by Laura at dVerse, but I wanted the palinode to have a structure instead of the unstructured verse referred to. Alas I think there are too many thinking like my lies.
Björn Rudbergs writings 
Noooo!!
Only joking
I know.😉
the structure works well in this contradictory didactic piece from the librarian
and it is not a sentiment that I like…. but there are probably many who agrees with this.
Oh no, please don’t blast the halls, Björn! What would the librarian do? I really like the brevity and structure of your poem, and the rhymes hold it all together.
My thought was to make it as a harsch “square” rebuke.
Achieved!
A damning indictment of those who seek to do just this, who would trade the gold of “dreams” for a handful of straw (metaphorically speaking!)
Indeed— and I realize the strength in saying the exact opposite of what you really mean.
Hah! Even if this had been posted for some other prompt, knowing you and your Ancient Librarian, I’d know this was a lie! 🙂
Indeed— that is a lay that cannot be told
Bjorn, she’s definitely under attack. Are you sure AI didn’t write the poem along with your image? ;) Scary times.
While on the subject of libraries and librarians, my younger son led me to a great deal on the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. I reading them and there is a library and a librarian in the books that I think you’d very much appreciate. In “Guards! Guards!” it features pretty prominently.
I have started to read Discworld a few times, but I have always lost touch after a while… my library is very much modeled on the writings by Jorge Luis Borges and also Umberto Eco… but it would be great to find other views as well…
In Discworld there are 4 main series of books. The one where it develops the library starts with Guards! Guards! I know you’ve mentioned Borges before but haven’t gotten there (yet.) Question: how would you characterize them as far as scariness? I don’t want to get spooked.
replacing texts with streets and malls… it has already happened, hasn’t it… it’s be commercial or be gone… 😦
The change is ongoing, and part of my writing is probably a way to say it needs to be saved.
The poem sounds like something one can hear on the news these days. There is also something quite unsettling about the invitation to burn down ones dreams which are enspirited in books, because other times when a call is being made to burn something written is as a healing, therapeutic practice or to incite forgetting.
Think you did a wonderful job with the poem next to your other one, the cadence also makes me think / see the poems as part of some theater play.
It could be part of a performance installment… add to that music and perhaps diary writings from people being the victim of these burnings.
The antithesis of your sentiments about a library.
Which I think makes the importance of the library so much stronger
Exactly! It’s something that we all need.
The poetry gods gave us mouths with two sides to speak from, the Devil and Angel whose banter is defines and defiles finding a true course. And the false mask of this poems white lies make the former poem’s truths more resonant, I think.
Indeed— a thesis is always strengthened by its antithesis.
Nice turnaround Bjorn!
I wasn’t fond of reading, but your writing made me read more.
How horrifying the thought but a perfect palinode. This for sure is a lie that should never come true.