There is no Frigate like a Book
to take us Lands away
-Emily Dickinson
I find you in these sunless stacks.
Your poems might be uncommonly fine
but your pages darken to brittleness
and you've never been checked out. Unless
your anchor's weighed and you proceed
to find the harbor of another's mind,
nothing will come of the cargo in your hold.
I stand in the gloom of the unread, and read.
John Barr / from Dante in China
