Bibliophagy

Fire is a god.Water is a god.
Books,too,are gods, with many enemies.
Demons in the hypothalamus
Or perhaps in the limbic system
Razed the libraries of Persepolis and Alexandria.
Memory is to be controlled,
Censored,looted and,if need be,destroyed.
Like an old rabbi,when my books grow sick
And die,I bury them with honour
In my secret geniza;
Thousands and thousands,in a hive of niches.

Cockroaches,termites,beetles,wasps and lice
Smell the sex of paper
And gorge their lust,
Laying evil eggs
Like supernovas.

The books of Sumer,
The first clay ziggurat words of men,
Dissolved by floods,
Burned and smashed by armies.
Books,
Invention of Nidaba,
Goddess of grain,
To whom the scribes would pray
Before and after writing.
Enmekar,king of Uruk,
Was damned to drink foul water in Hell
For not having his deeds written down.

The library of the Ramesseum,
And the House of Life at Om,
The vision of those papyri
Radioactive with fearsome knowledge…

The library is burning,
Black smoke covers the sun,
All over the city burned paper
Floats down, hot and delicate,
And for a second you can read
A fragment of text in negative,
Before it evaporates in your hand.