The Grave of the Grammarian Lysias
Very close to you, as you enter on the right, in the Beirut
library, we buried the sage Lysias,
the grammarian. The spot is beautifully right.
We placed him near those things of his that he perhaps
remembers even there -- scholia, texts, grammars,
scriptures, numerous commentaries in tomes on hellenisms.
This way, his grave will also be seen and honored
by us, when we pass among the books.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Tomb of the Grammarian Lysias
In the Beirut library, just to the right as you go in,
we buried wise Lysias, the grammarian.
The spot is beautifully chosen.
We put him near those things of his
that he remembers maybe even there:
notes, texts, commentaries, variants,
voluminous studies of Greek idioms.
Also, this way, as we go to the books,
we'll see, we'll honour his tomb.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Open Book's Monologue Part 5: Welcome To The Library!
Welcome to the library! come one come all
Welcome to the library! come with your brethren on this wall
Welcome to the library! come all you books tattered or new
Welcome to the library! come tired and overdue
Yes welcome to the library the place where you're most mundane
Yes welcome to the library the place where you're to endure most pain
Yes welcome to the library where you'll sit unwanted
Yes welcome to the library where you'll sit haunted
Yes welcome to the library where everyone's just like you
Yes welcome to the library where we're all books too!
Yes welcome to the library where you can take comfort
Yes welcome to the library where In the fact you're no longer unique
Yes welcome to the library You're just pen marks ink
Departing the library? I think not, even if you get out we'll bring you back
Departing the library? Here you rot, but we'll dust you to ease your passing
Departing the library? Don't make me laugh, here you're black and white
Departing the library? Nobody argues on your behalf, look more amassing
Welcome to the library! A place of keeping and safety
Welcome to the library! Take your place you'll like it, just wait and see
Welcome to the library! New books don't mind the old they're disillusioned
Welcome to the library! You've sold your soul... but it's too late for you
so WELCOME
poem by David Knox
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I Know I Have A Copy Somewhere
Wherever you may choose to look
You're guaranteed to find a book.
Perhaps a murder mystery.
Anthologies of poetry
Reference books and picture books.
Books on witchcraft and black magic
Tomes on almost any topic.
Some by authors long since dead.
Books which try to look ahead.
Books of every shape and size.
As I have come to realise.
Enough to start a library
Though jumbled up haphazardly.
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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Beirut
Beirut looks, to me, like
A beautiful young girl,
Full of life,
Full of mirth,
Who made no mistake,
Who can not be blamed,
For being created
So cheerful,
Jealousy not love
Has surrounded
Beirut since birth,
Yet all traps and tricks
To destroy innocent
Beirut failed,
And Beirut will be Beirut,
Until Dooms Day.
poem by Nadia Abduljabbar
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Poet is free
Poet is free
No grammarian can guide the poet
Do not tell before a poet you are dare
And I know there are so many grammarians
With so many grammars
The poet is one with truth with love
All the grammars old middle modern
Are of no use for a poet
At the time of poet's thought
Poet's love poet's poetry
Nobody can search research poet's history
Nobody can dare to described poet
Poet can create his own language
His own grammar and it does not bother the poet
Whether you like it or not
Leave the poet on his own way
It is better you to read him love him
If you are alive.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
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Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.
quote by Anthony Burgess
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Living wild species are like a library of books still unread. Our heedless destruction of them is akin to burning the library without ever having read its books.
quote by John Dingell
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Lebanon: Mountains, Meadows, Springs and Sea In The Same Sphere
And you ask me ' why
Do you love Beirut,
And Lebanon as a whole'?
Well, it is a requited kind of love,
For Lebanon love s me as well,
I can only reply
Saying can't you see
How it could heal
My physical
And psychological
Scars and wounds;
Is there a place
Like Beirut,
I wonder.
Now I am in Iowa,
But Lebanon sent Maria,
For me,
Maria is a Lebanese virgin
All of Lebanon is embodied in
The beauty of her face:
Her hair ‘s colour is like Al-Bekaa' s hay
Her white complexion
I s like Al-Arz' snow
And all the beauty
All the anger and calmness;
All the sadness
And tears
Of the Mediterranean waves
Are reflected in the shade
Of Maria's dark
Blue eyes
Is there a place
On this earth
Like Beirut,
I wonder!
The LADY of the whole World,
As Nizar says and Magda sings,
Could awake
My love for life;
My vitality
How can I not love her.
Is there a spot
That combines all
Contradictions in a smooth smart way
Like Lebanon
I wander!
Lebanon is my small cosmos,
It is God's Paradise on earth,
As Wadee' enchanting
Melody says;
The Whole world can be found
In this metropolitan fantastic place,
If I miss Saltsburg's blue mountains
I go to the Lebanese mountains and hills
If I miss birds of the English countryside,
I go to Al Bekaa's landscape
If I want to shop,
If I want good books,
If I want good food,
If I want to enjoy both
City and scenery
I go to Beirut,
If I want to drink spring water
I go to the city of many wills;
This is the meaning of Beirut's name;
Wills used to nourish old Beirut
And still
Just as it nourishes my sight, my heart
And will
It irrigates me
Just like a spring
That irrigates forests
In the wilderness.
poem by Nadia Abduljabbar
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Maverick
He remembers the backstabbing laughter.
And the heartfelt pain.
He remembers the innuendoed gossip...
And the slander done to him,
Still within him often remains.
He remembers his loved ones...
As some withered and died.
He remembers crying alone,
With no one to confide.
He remembers his struggles,
With aches in his body that persisted.
He remembers failed relationships...
With those who could not resist,
Communicating nothing but lies and conflict!
He remembers all of it,
And sometimes with a hidden bitterness that sits!
He remembers what it took,
To get released...to become unhooked.
With faith and a stick-to-itness,
Feeling as if dragging cinder blocks on each foot.
He remembers once being called a maverick!
And how today...
His maverick ways,
Bestows upon him a happiness...
Chartered by conviction.
And nothing he read from 'how-to-do' books.
Or afflictions of limiting restrictions.
Could he do it 'all' over again?
Probably not!
And why would he choose to?
To prove what?
And to who?
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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However, I survived and started to read all chemistry books that I could get a hand on, first some 19th century books from our home library that did not provide much reliable information, and then I emptied the rather extensive city library.
quote by Richard Ernst
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Hoarder Or Collector (Fun Poem 101)
Some of us are hoarders
and we don’t know where to stop.
We say we are collectors,
of rubbish maybe.
For a long time I have loved books
and collected every waif and stray.
People gave them to me by the dozen
and I never turned them away.
My collecting went so mad
I have now ten thousand or more
within my library.
Enough is enough I would say,
but still more arrived.
Now I don’t live in a house anymore,
as it has become a library.
There are books in every room
and not just one or two,
but dozens and dozens of them.
Everywhere you go;
there are books here and there.
Now I must down size
and my problem is
which ones do I let go,
and then I think
I might want to read a couple of them.
I am confused at what to do.
I know if I don’t do it soon
we won’t be able to
even get into the loo!
19 April 2009
Author’s note:
Loo is a word we use instead of saying Toilet. And, yes, I have that many books and I do have to get rid of some.
DVH
poem by David Harris
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Dead Library
There they go, bearing him in tears;
another gift for termites and earthworms,
another place in history foregone.
Just humus to the soil for all his toil.
Had I known, the poor fellow cried,
a break from pursuit of wealth and health
I would have taken to make felt
my Name in the pages of history.
Jets, cars and chariots all shall fade.
Castles, plantations all shall be obscured
with time's demise but history salutes
those who march on it in inky lines.
They that add no lines to the living
library get dead alongside their texts.
Selfishly, they read and saw nothing to write.
Read by none, their texts are in the Dead Library.
Mazi Ikechukwu Bismarck Oji
18th June,2010
poem by Ike Bismarck Oji
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I've recently enjoyed the Paul Thomas Anderson commentaries and the David Fincher commentaries.
Library Impact
Climbing along the stairs
The books collide
Library books
Collide in the corner
Distinct the writers stood shoulder to shoulder
The mutual gaze
Assume to see the dissonance one another
On division boards
The rough figures of writers
Squeezing an atmosphere of paradox
Who decided
The hanging spot
Descending the darkness
The exhausted images coughed
Slept the park trees
Bird wings folded
Ignited the flint by a line of poetry
Burning a book
Burning the heart
Burning the sense, feeling and symbol
Expecting to meet a greatness
But, the ladder is crowded
Suffocated the four seasons
They stood shoulder to shoulder
Lack of the metaphor in literature
Pressed in the thick books
Unintelligibly
Library frequently wronged
The lodge being found by the travelled poet
poem by Catherine Yen
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Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
quote by Mark Twain
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Silence of the Library
the silence of a library
it is the weight of knowledge
on the axis of the mind
waiting to swing into action
the silence of the library
each brain negotiates a path
through the written words where
the tjhoughts of great men flow
the silence of the library
a section of the books
that has gathered dust waits
for a life to be put into them
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.
quote by Anatole France
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Books
The universe (which others call the library). . .
-Jorge Luis Borges
Books which are stitched up the center with coarse white thread
Books on the beach with sunglass-colored pages
Books about food with pictures of weeping grapefruits
Books about baking bread with browned corners
Books about long-haired Frenchmen with uncut pages
Books of erotic engravings with pages that stick
Books about inns whose stars have sputtered out
Books of illuminations surrounded by darkness
Books with blank pages & printed margins
Books with fanatical footnotes in no-point type
Books with book lice
Books with rice-paper pastings
Books with book fungus blooming over their pages
Books with pages of skin with flesh-colored bindings
Books by men in love with the letter O
Books which smell of earth whose pages turn
poem by Erica Jong
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Honeymoon In Beirut
I wake up every night (to the sound)
To the sound of breaking glass
Got troops in the bed
And tanks in the hall
I kidnapped and held for ransom (the one in me)
The one in me that you loved
We wait for the fall
And put emotional bullet holes in the wall
And we both, keep sending signals all is well
Wish you were here
Honeymoon in beirut
Although I keep on sending postcards
From heaven (tell me)
Why do I stay (I dont know)
Honeymoon in beirut
And we still keep pretending
Sixes are sevens (tell me)
Why cant we say
There is no honeymoon
This is no honeymoon, no
This is no honeymoon
There is no honeymoon, no
Honeymoon in beirut
There are no peace talks pending
No quarter given (theres just)
Blood on the bed, where there used to be love
Strategy and maneuvers (have replaced)
Any love that was here
We have dinner in silence
And bullets with beer
I dont know what you want (my defeat)
Or complete surrender
Or peace in our time
While in bed we draw the battle line
And we sit, out in the rain
Writing cards to friends back home
The weather is fine
Honeymoon in beirut
Although I keep on sending postcards
From heaven (tell me)
Why do I stay (I dont know)
Honeymoon in beirut
And we still keep pretending
Sixes are sevens (tell me)
Why cant we say
There is no honeymoon
This is no honeymoon, no
This is no honeymoon
There is no honeymoon, no
And we stand out in the rain
Smiling as we sink like a stone
And hope for the end (whatever it is)
Honeymoon in beirut
Although I keep on sending postcards
From heaven (tell me)
Why do I stay (I dont know)
Honeymoon in beirut
And we still keep pretending
Sixes are sevens (tell me)
Why cant we say
There is no honeymoon
This is no honeymoon, no
This is no honeymoon
There is no honeymoon, no
song performed by by Rick Springfield
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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You draw beautifully with your pencil
You draw beautifully with your pencil,
sketches of almost any flower and plant,
things that are alive and some things that are dead
even a woman giving birth
on the beach.
You draw beautifully with your pencil
on a table are slices of bread
with a hungry dog on the other side;
things that are alive and some things that are dead,
there are children that are wasting away from starvation
and a woman’s hand with a wedding band.
You draw beautifully with your pencil,
a sounding level going down a well
being held by a strong male hand.
Things that are alive and some things that are dead,
you sketch and sometimes it’s any thing valuable;
even people in love on a tropical island
and you draw beautifully with your pencil
things that are alive and some things that are dead.
poem by Gert Strydom
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