Enquiry Desk

Do you have the one
with that poem they read at the funeral
in that movie?

Do you have the one
with that poem that they used to make us
learn at secondary school?

Do you have the one
with that poem that the Librarians decided was
too beautiful to catalogue and classify?

Do you have the one
with that poem that knows the difference between
ae hing and anither hing?

Do you have the one
with that poem that sat in the corner for ten years and then
exploded like a grenade in a crowded space?

Do you have the one
with that poem from the box of love letters
the city keeps under its bed?

Do you have the one
with that poem that identifies the chemical properties
of the ghosts of ideas it contains?

Do you have the one
with that poem that is a cache of weapons
which can never be put beyond use?

Do you have the one
with that poem that has learned to impersonate
other poems it has never met?

Do you have the one
with that poem that has mastered chiaroscuro
yet can also emulsion a room in an hour?

Do you have the one
with that poem that stole into my lover’s bed
when I wasn’t reading it?

Do you have the one
with that poem that is bigger on the inside
that on the outside?

Do you have the one
– you must have it –
with that poem that is a Library in itself,
each leaf a life we might one day live?

I don’t know what it’s called
but it calls, it calls.