The Infinite Library
by Jillian Pattinson
There’s a man climbing the book stacks, all he’s read
behind and beneath him, part now of the firmament
on which he balances his ladder. He has been a long time
climbing, reading as he goes. He remembers it all,
no need to down-climb, backtrack, reread. Long
as his years of climbing, his recollection of all he’s read,
hands, eyes and feet all fluency, economy; deft and steady
his ascent. He keeps to hard-bound literature. Anthologies
and well-read authors make the soundest steps. From time
to time he stumbles upon a slim volume of obscure origin,
whose weight belies the name. These he carries with him,
letting go only when the burden of whispers
buckles his legs, sending a tremor through the edifice.
Like feathers they drift into darkness, no echo returning
to tell of the fall. Even as he climbs, reads, climbs,
the stacks grow taller, yet he never tires, each shelf
firing his attempt at the next. No lack of oxygen
in the bookish air and ever the chance of a fresh breath,
something not quite new but sharp enough to raise a gasp,
release a sigh. Quiet as a dust mote circulating in a light shaft
between the towering stacks he climbs, directed
by the voice of every author, accompanied by every
character. All his life, it seems, he has been climbing,
paragraph by paragraph, page upon page, book stacks
growing ahead and behind. Never enough time, never
enough light for so much yet unread. Still he climbs,
having come so far, unsure now of the way down,
knowing how deep the silence that greets the fall.
Jillian Pattinson is an Australian writer based in Melbourne. Her poems have been published in the Australian Book Review, Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Best Australian Poems 2007, Motherlode: Australian Women’s Poetry 1986-2008, and others. The working manuscript for Jillian’s first poetry collection, The Infinite Library, won the 2010 Alec Bolton Prize for an unpublished manuscript. In 2010, Jillian’s poem “The Still Point” won the inaugural UTAS Place and Experience Poetry Prize.