Ananta Madhavan - Bookman

My books compactly occupy the shelves
In random combinations like my thoughts.
I can place some of them in a jiffy,
This Nabokov or Yeats, that Borges -
Familiar as furniture, taken for wanted.
I seldom ask them out, and when I do,
I vaguely remember my blurred first reading
And the footprints of my eager scouting:
A footnote, a sideline or marginal tick,
A thorn of comment. I don't feel this now.
What have I lost? I've lost the hunter's scent,
The tingling in the fanciful mind
Of a headlong plunge into dangerous pages.

At the best of times
There is something second-hand about books.
As for the 'deja lu', the authors age with you,
As if their words were never new-minted,
As if they are blighted from your brain.
All is devalued. Even my hankering after
A severe classicism is recognisably absurd
In these fragmented times. I don't regret
Not having packed a shelf with my own staleness.

Ananta Madhavan

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