It’s fallen half apart, a derelict.
The gatherings have sprung, the boards detached,
The spine perished, folding maps cut out.
The title page is splotched with ink and nicked
At the edge, the author’s homely portrait scratched—
A splash of beer, faint thumbmarks all about—
Discarded once, but now it’s yours. It lives,
Like you, diminished now by age and loss.
And so, it brings the breeze, the autumn sun,
The creaking door that with a push still gives
The afternoon, the birds and clouds, grass, moss,
The world still new, the journey not begun,
The path curling from sight in the soft glow
Of a fading day—and you, prepared to go.

*****

Ernest Hilbert writes: “I am a rare book dealer, so I spend my days surrounded by books. I love all kinds of books, and I have a particular affection for books no one seems to want but which are, nonetheless, worthwhile. There are, after all, far more books than there are readers. When a book is taken home, adopted, as it were, it finds a new life. Each book one acquires is, in its way, a hedge against the future, a small hope one might some day find the time to read it. When a book is read for the first time, however old it is, however many times it has been read before, it becomes a new book. The structure of the poem is designed to express this sense of renewal and hope, the litany of degradation and wear, the sense of hopelessness, one finds in the octave redeemed, after the volta, in the sestet. 

“I intended to communicate that sense of excitement I still feel when I first open a book, but I likely also had in mind Benjamin Franklin’s mock epitaph, written when he was 22, which begins “The Body of B. Franklin Printer / Like the Cover of an old Book / Its Contents torn out . . .” Finally, I must admit that there are few places I find myself happier than at a promising friends of the library book sale.”

*****

‘Friends of the Library Sale’ was originally published in The Sonneteer.

Ernest Hilbert was born in 1970 in the city of Philadelphia and educated at Rutgers and Oxford Universities. He is the author of the poetry collections Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan—selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize—Last One Out, and Storm Swimmer, winner of the 2022 Vassar Miller Prize. He works as a rare book dealer in Philadelphia. Visit him at www.ernesthilbert.com

Photo: “Journey” by ~Matt LightJam {Mattia Merlo} is licensed under CC BY 2.0.