What is lonelier
than knowing you’re
the only one who cares?
Mr Thurber’s dead
Jackie Benny forgotten
And Charles Dickens?
Just someone read in school.
The attitude summed
up best by a writer friend
who said, did your Dante make
the New York Times
Bestseller list?
What is lonelier
and more pathetic
than a man with gifts no one wants?
What is sadder than wisdom and wonder
lying dusty in a dark room
that no one will ever enter?
I’ll tell you,
in case you haven’t guessed:
It’s the man who lives in that room
Alone.
What an interesting poem, David. My thought is that few on the NY Times Bestseller List will be discussed 500 years from now? I think Dante's Inferno will still be read then (presuming anyone will be able to actually read then!). Yes, a library can be a lonely place, but when I was an undergraduate at Ohio State (in the days before personal computers) I loved spending a cold, snowy evening in the depths of the stacks in the Russian Literature section. Read on!
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