The Other Side of The Desk
(The Ugly Librarian)
In my middle years (not young not old) I spent many hours in service
On the shiny oak desks of municipal and academic libraries
Not once did a sexual thought enter my head despite the staff
Being not only erudite but in some cases classically proportioned
The hours for daydreaming were many but usually interrupted
As in the case of the Tottenham Hale branch library one sleety night
Where a fourteen year old female who had already tried to burn us down
Splintered the wooden shelf above my head with a pair of garden shears.
I still have a copy of Fires by Raymond Carver smoke-damaged by that fire starter.
Ironic really in so many ways as was photocopying for ten hours straight
in the Royal Festival Hall Poetry Library so poets could read which magazine
to send their important missives to, a job so tiresome it sent one to sleep
Or the moment a former Head of the Admiralty and head of MI6
Gently held my hand with the coldest hand and stare I’d ever known
Enquiring if I painted watercolours, his cold eyes betraying nothing
Which appropriate as he was the model for George Smiley it transpired
Later he belittled my paintings in front of a crowd as the daubings of an amateur
and nonsense although I had been accepted by the Royal College 10 years before.
The problem was I a mere minion and should not be ranked alongside the students
of the College he Master of at all no that wouldn’t do. Sent me packing.
Every hour sat in a draughty branch library, in a empty science floor,
Cataloguing scientific journals until their were none left to catalogue at all
Stood me in good stead to spot a academic poseur fresh from a research meeting
Boosting their academic profile with padding and bullshit, poets not the worst
Fine Art schools take some beating for completely nonsensical drivel but do not
Discount the many academic poets long of tenure and weighted down with plaudits
From academic friends and the presses that that they fund based on their heft
Back in 1990 their output was weighed on a scale in Edinburgh, it saved reading
Now we have the internet version of the scales, the tug and pull of academics
Boosting their failing departments and losing the plot at the rise of the uncanny
But no matter the old presses still churn the tomes they spill but no-one reads them
To be an academic poet these days must be like Canute in a sea of likes
So enjoy your time on the beach my friends the tide is coming in….
The other side of the desk is already empty..
We have a post in old East Germany if you fancy it.
Shame I can no longer aim straight as I did then.
Fancy a sherry?