Open Writing

My first librarian was a Greek

And he couldn’t speak much English,
but he knew the value of sixpence.

My first librarian seemed very, very, old;
He wore a crumpled dark striped suit,
a heavy silver watch chain looped across his concave middle,
buttoned waistcoat, thin shirt.

He was bent and nervous and twitched a bit
a scraggy iron coloured moustache draped
beneath craggy nose and sucked in cavernous cheeks.

He was my librarian because he bought books.

Auction lot books:Robinson Crusoe and Marie Corelli
Walter Scott, and The Water Babies;
The Jungle Book, and Peter Pan,
Grubby paperbacks: Raymond Chandler and Peter Cheyney
Dickens and the Brontes; Superman and Batman Comics
Strange books in tiny ancient print, faded covers, and esses for effs:
Books covered in strange waxy brown paper,
Spotted with candle grease; books with loose pages
And split edges:
Some had marbled frontispieces, or were leather bound:
A whole world of riches stacked front edge down in untidy rows
On an old kitchen table on the pavement outside the shop
Half in the sun in a road at the end of which you glimpsed the sea.

The sign above the shop said “BARBER & WATCHMAKER”

The sign on the table said: “BOOKS 6d “

Sometimes I had sixpence.

I could stand at the table for days
and read every book on it while deciding which one to buy.

Sure, he did chivy me a little bit.

Then I would buy one
And bring it back the next day,
Saying I didn’t like it, and wanted to change it.

Somewhere in that immigrant father in those sad depression years
There surely burned something of the fire of the Greeks of old:

He never chased me away:
And in those days we all knew the value of sixpence.