The afternoon we took my father’s bookshelves
to the British Heart Foundation
was the afternoon I learnt something
about the lending library of one’s forebearers.
His stooped and stoned spine bent
under the sliding weight of books
collecting his end as he effed and jeffed
trying to get his foot up on the curb.
Fuck sake! Pick it up your end! Your end!
You’re like a fart in a trance.
Here were all his books on philosophy and sociology.
Bit pointless for a pipe fitter. A précis on phenomenology
isn’t usually required from arc welders.
Still, after two weeks offshore this was how he spent his time
in books. Books we were giving to charity.
I couldn’t help a churlish snark,
I thought these were supposed to be all the books I’d read one day.
“Well you’ve left it a bit fucking late,” he rasped
and his sandal slipped off the curb
and poured all that wasted time out onto the pavement
leaving me to pick up the Memories,
Thoughts and Reflections of Carl Gustav Jung,
Aldous Huxley and Sartre amongst others
I’d never heard of.
It’s me now that flies off the handle,
each dogeared remark ripped straight from him
sulking in the car. After I’d collected up his books
and donated his mother’s old mahogany bookcases
he said,
It’s the bookcase that matters.
And we can’t take it with us.
