Library
By Judith Bishop
after Czeslaw Milosz
Snow showers, lionesses, bakeries,
summer beds, armed rangers,
paradox and dream alight in me.
I rise from my porticoes
waiting for the children, who are poets.
The angled hands of builders
who made me for the working man
have fallen, autumn leaves.
Yet their children's children romp about in me.
Jasmine and wisteria hide my naked columns.
I feel the dewy damp of grass
and echo the nightly song of crickets.
Above, the evening star. The children have left me
constellations of beginnings.