Self-Portrait as the University Library 

Through chill wind, night stillness, and snow, I walk 

toward the jaundiced moon, tonight like a pair 

of lovers clasped together, creating 

a perfected, envious sphere. Children 

launch handmade fireworks. Packs of wild dogs 

gallop past. Red and white pulses. Someone 

opens the library’s wide Roman door

and I glide through, past the receptionist, 

who chews a gleaming apple at her desk,

gazing beyond the page before her, eyes

lost like a saint or animal. Inside

the silent periodical room I watch 

the beautiful couple studying late.

It brings great pain, attempting to transcribe 

their wordless exchanges. He is typing 

with ravenous, efficient clarity

a tract on the inferno of the same,

enlisting wakened ghosts, cleansing fire, time. 

She annotates a volume of Hegel, 

recording the instances when her mind 

reaches barriers, borders, exclusions. 

He closes his document and leans back,

stretching those wide arms. His shirt’s lower hem

rises, exposing a brief expanse of 

abdomen. Dark hairs trailing from the navel. 

The library’s vaults and arches tremble. 

Dust is loosened from the rafters, floats down. 

He uses a socked foot to raise her red

pleated skirt, trace a line along the bare 

slope of her right calf. All erudition 

is threatened by this tenderness, as is 

her notetaking, which was until then near 

reaching a critical juncture. Such heat

is terribly distracting, but urgent, 

necessary, the evening wind, and all. 

The two collect themselves, their wide texts and 

refuse, the apple cores, empty glasses, and

set out for the small bed they share, feeling 

on the long walk through wind, stillness, and snow

the sudden agony from that moment

in the periodicals room temper 

into a steady, tenuous throb fueled 

by their soon to be realized and moonlit 

coupling, their friction and dampness, by 

their crystalline, futile understandings. 

What is the actual use of pleasure? 

She finds herself asking after, looking 

out upon the oak boughs, the rounded moon,

man resting behind her. She is unable

to shake from her awareness the hinted 

arrival from earlier, in the silent 

periodical room. Why does one read

a text, take notes, then read the text again?

What boundary does mind press up against?

She knows that moon, snow, and night are merely 

instances, that wind refers to nothing

outside itself. Knows that nothing is what 

there is. And still, outside, the snow phases

appear to widen the oak boughs, appear 

to multiply the mass of night. Man stirs

from his sleep, reaches out to caress her 

turned back, draw her again into his arms, 

their red linens widening. The oak boughs

emit a light containing no color.