The Reader

It waited for him in the dusty treatises
On his father's bookshelf, in the back stacks
Of the local library, in the rare book room
And the manuscript collection on the fifth floor,
In the basement where they kept the well-thumbed
Periodicals and crumbling theology texts.
Unshelved and displaced, uncatalogued, overdue,
It waited in the background while he scanned
The entries and noted the citations, memorizing
The names of authors, writing down titles.
It shuddered when he read about the infinite
Starry spaces and the fast-moving river
Into which he would never step twice,
And it paused in the margins of the ancients,
In archaic Greek rituals and thunderous voices
Rising out of the whirlwind. He could not
Hear it breathing between the pages, belabored
In German, trilling in Spanish, stammering
Backward in Hebrew. He did not listen
To it crying out softly in the trees
Like a prophecy, though it waited for him
Nonetheless, a patient and faithful oblivion,
An emptiness, which he would not call God.

--Edward Hirsch, 1994.

The truth is, we have stepped into this river, this very selfsame river many,
many times; but it doesn't matter.

We will step into this river again and yet again
because it is what we do: we are the ones who wade in.

We wade in most often wordlessly but, on occasion, remarking what we do:
out loud or to ourselves.

And the "infinite starry spaces" pay us no mind,
for that is what they do.

Or don't do. Either way, it looks and feels the same to us
(or to "him," whoever he might be).

Maybe someday someone somewhere will once more attend to the soft
crying in the branches and find it joyfully (or fearfully) articulate.

And he or she will interpret for the rest us what was heard, or thought heard; and maybe, just maybe,
we will return then to gather "on this beach of the tumid river"

to sing or to recite,
to laugh or to weep,
to admonish or to forgive,

once more, before sleep.