Old Books from Libraries

Old books have a weight to carry,

the weight of all the years behind

and on each page somewhere a line

marked in red as if to give it permanency

in the fleeting hours and the years marked in the calendar-time.

And each line marked is meant for someone to come and read it later and dip in the lake of the words to find the lost pearl.

Old books are forests with a smell of ink that feels like musk

giving away the secret code for the fawn to follow the trail.

I have borrowed old books often from the old libraries

hoping that I might get the traces of how you might have read and felt, how your heart and mind worked and left behind the signs in the hurried notes you scribbled in the narrow margins.

You were always the one who raced ahead of time

and I the one who followed the trail in the forest of cryptic signs.

Sushama Karnik (c)