Explanation of my college room's relative bareness

People express surprise upon

The starkness of my shelves.

I’ll pin it down between ourselves:

I am famous for reading

And I cannot.


Sure, pragmata also there,

I don’t care much for lugging things.

If it were only the teeth-grinding,

The arched cat-maundered shoulders – but

The blaming also, the incompetence,

The damage. No, no carrier I.


But this too is misleading. What I want

Or wanted, lay at first in carrying,

In hitting, running. The black reading-lamp

Was step two, the caste-marker,

Could not be shaken off.


I never treasured them, the blocks,

Never relished their smell. They were

A substance to block out non-time,

A sharp, negative means.


Why should I fill the chasms

With the cowls that kept me down and in,

In for the count, but quarantined?