Library

High up in my carrel, in the stone tree
that sits woodless and rootless on the dust of the earth,
if you could but see me there stonefaced as I read,
stone-round eyes cast on the page like rocks on a turf.
Maybe then you would know
what strange animal this is — this student. The damp grotto mind
shackled up like an invalid, quarantined alone
within the castle of consciousness, the dim
mutation of time:
spaceless, spiritless, boneless, oh so closed
in his library of petrified stone.