LIBRARY II
The library-ship has long been crammed,
the numerous books have become a heavy load.
The mermaids have changed their song,
They perch on the bow, but the ships are tired of sailing,
they’d rather drift only.
The lighthouse keepers
neglect their duty, chase away
the gulls in a morose mood, napping idly all afternoon.
In the plains, the books don’t look like baked bricks
used for the building of the tower of Babel.
The former builders are long gone
and their knowledge, it seems, became forgotten.
The great manuals for sailing from Homer to Melville
have gone out of use and the seas have become
choked with weeds,
traps that can’t be avoided.
Sindbad the Sailor and the shrewd man from Ithaca
have found a safe haven, perhaps even a new job – “And so,”
they say, “now only small fish wriggle in the seas.“
The magnetic hand of the compass
sleeps exhausted and it turns everywhere
except to north. Maelstrom, the famous whirlpool,
has sucked in, long ago, its victims
and now has no one to churn the mind of.
The philosophers, like rats, have left the ship
and all turned towards solid soil.
The poets, with their unsure gait,
find refuge against the wind, fearing cold.
The sea expanse, that poets’ muse,
has no secret to appeal, nor to guide to the unknown.
The people turn back to the shore
as if they took a wrong road.
And there are more and more loads of books.
The sea cradles the bitter slime
of Behemoth and Leviathan, as it was said in the old world.
In fact, the ship stands on land, and is used as a bar,
whereas plastic, oil spills, and garbage circumnavigate the sea.