47 responses to “The silence inbetween”

1. A creative take, and mesmerizing as we dwell on this “passage” between times through your words.

   • thanks.. I have been listening too much on history podcasts lately

2. It seems that there is cycle or pattern to history, so much that the present is like yesterday. There are stories hidden deep in that barren library.

   • Indeed.. and do we know that we transit from one era to the next until much later?

3. the blends and blurring of times and spaces is excellent – love the way it jumps through these and the association of warm corpse with the living, sleeper

   • Thank you.. I tried my best after listening to way to many history podcasts.

4. A most creative approach!

   • Thank you, I had fun writing it.

5. made me think of when they found the remains of an historic king under a car park in Leicester England a couple of years ago.

   loved the poem

   • Yes that was the reference, the death of Richard III is also seen as the transition from mediveal to early modern time…

     • i remembered watching the tv footage of them digging it was fascinating to watch.

6. The liminal space between car park and king’s grave opens forward and back of ages (early and modern) and the passage of a librarian between wings, his thought taking wing looking back on the lessons of history and forward to what that inheritance has yet to learn. Fun read and on point, bro.

   • Thank you… yes listening to a lot of history podcasts brings you into that space.

7. I like the description of
   “waiting like the dust moths
   dancing downward
   in his barren library”📚

   • I tried to describe the visual between the shelves.

8. This poem made me think back to the movie “Back to The Future”

   Nice luminal write

   much🤍love

   • Thank you… time is interesting

9. Time is slippery. It often defies our attempts to categorize it.

   • We are experts in dividing time without really understand the concept of it.

10. I love this blurring of time, and the concrete and the abstract. It’s so fascinating that they discovered his bones. I thought about going into British history instead of US history.

    • Thank you, and how important that body was with the transition from the war of the roses to the Tudor/Stuart era.

      • You’re welcome. Yes, indeed.
        Did you read that some amateur historians recently found the manor house of Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s mother?

11. Wow Bjorn, one of your best. Vivid imagery and stands on its own without the footnotes….Jim

    • Thank you… it came quite natural in the way people define that division of time.

12. Very nicely done. The library is a great example of a liminal space.

    • It could be there, especiella the space between the shelves.

      • Yes, it is a great metaphor.

13. I like how you’ve placed the historical event as a spot between shelves in a library…perfect..

    • We often do divide history and therefore there is a division in space in the library.

14. Brilliant Bjorn, all that space between dying and being found , such a wonderful imaginative poem.

    • Of course nobody knew then the way we use that death as a significant change in time.

15. Who would imagine a liminal space under the tarmac? I like how your librarian explores “between the shelves” and measures history as “counting corpses”…well done!

    • A king might find his space beneath…

16. parking lots are indeed the ultimate liminal of places in modern day and medieval times too. What a story! Thank you.

    • Yes there are so many liminal spaces in time and in space.

17. Very cool take on the challenge!

    • Thank you…

18. An excellent defining of liminal space, Björn, both in the library shelves, the shift in historical periods and in the “empty” car park…

    • There are many liminal spaces within each other.

19. I wondered if it was King Richard during the poem…but here you really went deep, down, and dark, because my goodness, head in hands indeed. Verse so rich with references is more than poetry, and poetry so dark is more than black…and yet, and yet, is there anything more suitable right now? In this, above, your poem, we have the most powerful of commentaries.

20. I liked to see what I found when digging into such a transition from era to era, and what I find is the wretched king with a body forgotten for centuries.

    As for your excellent haibun, is so much darker, since it is for real (really)

21. What a fantastic meditation on temporal liminality! It brings me back to my doctoral studies in English literature, and to a comment I once read by another scholar who said he studied medieval literature because of the “communion” it offers between past and present. I also love the dream simile in the first stanza.

22. How are the mighty fallen…

    Richard’s bones ended up in an ugly by-water of history. A bit like the Tardis…

23. Hi Bjorn, I really love this poem. Your words perfectly conjure up this quite reflective place in the library that broods on a period of history.

    • Thank you… yes it is fascinating thinking about time, and all those pivotal moments from the past, without really knowing if a certain moment today may be pivotal.

24. Ooh this is exciting and I want to know more!

25. This is so creative. Perfectly defines liminal spaces,

    and leaves us with a bit of a mystery.

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