Borrowed Books (A Memory Play in 1 Act)

This mutation makes the text habitable, like a rented apartment. It transforms another person's property into a space borrowed for a moment by a transient. Renters make comparable changes in an apartment they furnish with their acts and memories; as do speakers, in the language into which they insert both the messages of their native tongue and, through their accent, through their own "Turns of phrase," etc., their own history. - Michel de Certeau

I do not know what I should make of many borrowed books.

I hold them up against my face and feel the secret words you wrote

as if a you held young in time would meet me, and would speak.

We would meet in some non-place, and talk, and not know why,

Nor why our faces would be open, why you poured out words into my head.

You would not know, I know, just why you speak, or whose ears

Would drink in words, whose eyes would ask the questions you could not hear,

But we would speak on just the same, and trace a finger where words came alive,

Although I would know, if you did not, that they would change for both.

Each underline an artifact, each scribbled note a sign;

We would trace out bodies in the text, and part, and not hold that time

As any more than if we'd never spoke.

I read the first one first to last and only stopped for pause

To see what else I might have missed, a scripture in the margin

Giving shape to formless thought. I knew the glory of a priest,

And slept with it against my chest.

I have kept the others closed, wondering whether and what

Secrets they will speak, holding each next to my face,

In hope of hearing you.