Author Information
The Library
The steel racks stood like sentinals
Looking beyond the large windows
As the earth moved for the new build
Around the abandoned hall
Where caterpillar excavators roared
In defiance
To the small notice on the wall
“Silence please” library in use
On the bottom shelf
Of the rows of books
They lie back to back
The text book of surgery
And an anthology of medicine and poetry
They ruffle with the wind
That blows under the locked doors
Breathes life in the pages
The poet physicians, and the surgeons
Gather in the empty room
Abse*, Holub**, Jenkins*** and more
Softly peeling the loneliness
With verses and notes
Outside the moon, waxes and wanes
The books wait for the return of the members
Stethoscopes hanging around necks
Tourniquets and torches, stuffed in pockets
Rucksacks and laptops on the backs
They will come browsing, whispering,
Others do the talk
The friendships
The brief encounters
The aroma of coffee mixing with
The smell of the books
They wait for the work to end
- *Danni Abse Chest physicians and poet
- ** Miroslav Holub Immunologist and poet
- ***Nigel Jenkins Poet and writer from Swansea
NICE TO READ
Your poem flows with the velocity of an electric train here. You are almost like Emily Dickinson when she wrote her poem "Faster tham Fairies, Faster than Witches" while travellling on a train more than a hundred years ago. Your references are apt and precise and I know why --- because you have spent much of your lifetime in libraries especially the Lansdowne Library in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, when it was known as the British Council Library at that time. However the way you have ended it is like a sudden interjection, a sudden stop to the feelings that must have been hovering in your heart and mind. I enjoyed reading it. But honestly do extend it a little more and make it end the way it should....with the end coming like a railway station and not a block in the track. I hope you won't mind my words and think about what I have suggested. You will gain a lot my dear friend by revising it....believe me....as I speak to you from the core of my heart, mind and soul.
Muhammad Naveed Ahmed.
Pen name:Emmenay.
Yahoo email ID:Ambitious7
Initials: M.N. Ahmed.
Thank you
Thank you my dearest friend, I know what you mean. I also wanted to let it flow gently into a train station but then again the kind of contemporary poetry in vogue calls foe abrupt ends, something that leaves you wanting more. I am open to any suggestions from you as always, I value your critique, and so proud that you find my poetry worthy.
love and regards