Remaindered
No longer upright like soldiers,Neatly shelved, spines straight-stacked,
Alphabetical order, fiction authors A to Z,
But tumbled, piled at random,
Stickered, scattered, reduced, remaindered,
Bargain bin, basement bucket,
Rough treatment at many hands,
Edges knocked, jackets torn,
Dirty, dusty, fingered and forgotten,
Marked and marked down,
No dignity or ceremony at the end of life.
Space needed
To make way for the new stuff,
Spirit of today, happening now,
Celebrity authors and TV tie-ins,
Titles that sell, units that shift,
The next thing, the new wave,
Modern, fashionable, exciting,
Where it’s at, de nos jours,
Moving with the times,
The zing of the zeitgeist,
The ring of the till.
No room for the out-of-print,
Except out of the way,
Out of sight, out of mind,
Deleted from the catalogue,
Stock-code and index,
A lingering demise,
Delayed disposal,
Awaiting final solution,
Dumped, shredded, pulped,
Bulk commodity of paper.
He handles a copy, thumbing pages,
Familiar with every word,
The effort it cost him,
Regretful, bitter,
Never borrowed nor bought,
Unread volume,
No reviews, no royalties, no renown,
Flees from the bookshop, the door left flapping.
Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment