The office is so full of bloody books,
propped dangerously on tables, cases, chairs,
propped everywhere, so everywhere one looks
one briefly shrugs one’s shoulders and despairs.
The drawback to so many bloody books
is that they come between us, me and her,
and interrupt what should be melting looks
with titles unforgivably obscure.
Take yesterday for instance. How she came
across the room to ask me for a file,
and then gave me, as though I were to blame,
that look she must have practised as a girl,
and all the while her legs were lost from view
behind these toppling board and paper walls
built from À la recherche du temps perdu,
Britannicas, King Lears, Das Capitals.
I doted on the sweep of her loose clothes,
and when she turned I glimpsed her muscled back,
and when she sat, the glasses on her nose,
and stretched out on this speculative rack
I kept her in the corner of my eye
until another pile of books appeared.
O jesus wept I heard my spirit cry.
The saint within me chewed his holy beard.
Five weeks have gone. We chatted once or twice,
and once or twice I think I had my chance
but muffed it, never really broke the ice,
got past a dozen can I’s and their can’ts,
and now she’s gone and now another temp
will take her seat and do her morning’s work
and, O Lord, how my little soul is damp,
how cockled at its edges, like a book.
