We could not yet read, and were still innocent
of the glamour of words, and so, unbeguiled,
in those endless book-bound intervals of time
when our father withdrew to his quiet place
we would sometimes stand at the door listening
and wondering, but were not permitted to enter
in case we rioted in its stillness. We would hear
Radio 3, or the scribble of his pen, as he wrote
his sermons on how a wounded and imperfect god
was the only kind the human mind could conceive
with words weighed on his bookshelves, stories
balanced on the scales of his estimation.
During those book-ended hours as a child
I dreamed of a world of instant and eternal access
to the Edenic grove that surely lay behind that door,
walking together hand in hand with him
forever in the cool protective shade of ungrown trees
never to be felled, pulped, rolled, pressed, never
to feel the clumsy thumb and inky smudge of type
and learn the knowledge of print.
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