Love Song From a Library

Why must the story of our death precede the story of our life

A man had fallen on Deansgate, the story went

Open as the leaves of his book

He had thrown to the kerb.  Someone said

The bang of  paper, was strangely shaking

Like a bird with its wings clipped

Trying to turn.

Yearn to be close to the action

-          My brief – although breaking

As I chose library, learning

That so many stares

Searched for something deeper

Than ambulances, policemen

I clutched the spine in my fingers

Where his hands

Once were.

We are taught to look forward

To tragedy, accident

But isn’t this habitat

The paper confirmed

Compiled and looked over

Rather than the writers who wrote him

Into a bulletin

The feel of paper

Hard to imagine

Before he was taken by circumstance

And returned, and returned.