The Lost Library of Jesi

CAROLINE MALDONADO

(London)

 

They handled them with cotton gloves. Leather covers

tooled in gold, paper from Fabriano, printed woodcuts

 

from Bologna: manuscripts, almanacs, books of poetry

and philosophy, science and history; mappa mundi

 

and the first edition of the Divine Comedy. They lifted

bevelled bookshelves, levered panels from the walls

 

and as they worked the sun spilled centuries of light

through slits in the shutters across the marble tiles.

 

Until behind the coffered panels they discovered

fissured stones opening to a sealed room, windowless

 

and cool, with columns fallen under a hemispheric dome,

shadows curled asleep in empty niches along the walls.

 

The men crawled inside that chamber’s deepest quiet

where one or two still could hear the beating of a heart.

 

 

The Lost Library of Jesi was highly commended in the TRYangle Project Poetry Competition 2012.