Tomes Poem by Billy Collins

Tomes

Rating: 3.5


There is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan,
and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
the ones you can turn to anytime,
when the night is going wrong
or when the day is full of empty promise.

I have nothing against
the thin monograph, the odd query,
a note on the identity of Chekhov's dentist,
but what I prefer on days like these
is to get up from the couch,
pull down The History of the World,
and hold in my hands a book
containing nearly everything
and weighing no more than a sack of potatoes,
eleven pounds, I discovered one day when I placed it
on the black, iron scale
my mother used to keep in her kitchen,
the device on which she would place
a certain amount of flour,
a certain amount of fish.

Open flat on my lap
under a halo of lamplight,
a book like this always has a way
of soothing the nerves,
quieting the riotous surf of information
that foams around my waist
even though it never mentions
the silent labors of the poor,
the daydreams of grocers and tailors,
or the faces of men and women alone in single rooms-

even though it never mentions my mother,
now that I think of her again,
who only last year rolled off the edge of the earth
in her electric bed,
in her smooth pink nightgown
the bones of her fingers interlocked,
her sunken eyes staring upward
beyond all knowledge,
beyond the tiny figures of history,
some in uniform, some not,
marching onto the pages of this incredibly heavy book.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Ian Fraser 16 September 2011

It's called the weight of knowledge.

2 2 Reply
Tom J. Mariani 30 October 2007

I am thinking about tomes and BOOM, here comes Billy with tombs. Just another great example of his art. I have some eleven pounders on my book shelves too: e.g.The People's Almanac 1975 and The Word Finder 1947. They don't mention my mother either but they do have some 'Fom The Library Of' stickers signed by dead relatives and unknown ghosts from used book stores.

4 1 Reply
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