Harvard undergrads

used to read books

on the Red Line train:

Nausea, Death in Venice,

Narcissus and Goldmund.

How many eyes nowadays

scan print and paper?

Virtually none.

*

I’ll still carry

three or four paperbacks

in my tote bag,

the poor man’s Kindle.

*

When I was sixteen,

I hid a copy

of The Colossus

in my jacket pocket

at Steve & Cory’s wedding.

Thirty years have passed

since I bought my first volumes of verse:

Eliot’s Four Quartets,

Rimbaud’s Illuminations,

Heaney’s Field Work.

Eliot because it was cheap,

Rimbaud because it was French,

Heaney because Mr Waldron

said he was good.

*

Sure, I’m as guilty

as the next guy

of checking the iPhone

during a dull commute.

But there are times

at home alone

I’ll pick up a book,

an old favorite,

weathered, seasoned,

and pace from room to room

reading aloud

to the four walls.

*

Wystan, Estlin, Theodore, Marianne,

you wouldn’t be the same

as lucent type on a small screen.

You’re most at home

in dead-tree editions!

I lift your pages

and kiss the verses

as the priest

kisses the Gospel.