NO CONTEST.
Sunday after Sunday
we trod the way,
familiar past the point of boredom.
The way led to the House of God.
Ten, twenty, thirty children,
all under sixteen
marched as prisoners
to sing and listen to Jesus,
who never answered
our prayers for a mum and dad
to care, or to care for.
.
Books, it was,
that broke bewilderment,
that offered the key
to end imprisonment.
They lifted me
from baffled thoughtlessness.
Before that,
ambition tied to ignorance
left me gullible.
I swallowed sorcery from tricksters,
when licence was offered, I took liberties,
I clutched prejudice to a proud heart,
and sought revenge
mistaking it for justice.
.
Then I found Aberdare’s new library,
top of Canon Street, huge and glassy.
Not the cramped Wesleyan chapel next door
where Sunday folk dropped pennies
into a box they hardly believed in.
No lungs strained for hymns there.
Prayers mumbled and stale
floated up each Sunday
only to fall on stony ground
by Monday.
The contrast was plain:
the threat of righteous censure
against the liberty of shelves.
No contest.
.
The library became my cathedral.
Imagination rang its bells.
Books unlocked the gate.
By six, Enid Blyton gave me gangs;
the Famous Five, the Secret Seven,
comrades in mystery and mischief.
By seven, Dickens pressed in,
filling my head with orphans, villains,
hunger and law courts,
a world too close to mine.
At nine, Alexandre Dumas,
swashbuckles and swords
against the grey of chapel hymns.
At ten, Jack London’s wolves and sailors,
men wrestling ice and hunger.
I believed him.
At eleven, Fenimore Cooper’s wild frontiers
where betrayal and survival tangled.
At twelve, I hid with Edmond Dantès,
learning revenge and patience,
then drifted downriver with Huck Finn
into questions grown-ups never answered.
Orwell was waiting,
his words sharp as glass.
I never let him go.
By fourteen, Harper Lee
was my secret shield.
Scout’s wide eyes,
Atticus’s weary honour,
whispers that justice was fragile,
but not impossible.
At fifteen, Hardy’s hollow lanes
where passion bled into ruin.
At sixteen, Steinbeck’s dust and grapes,
labourers breaking under hunger,
their pain written plain.
Holden Caulfield sulked nearby,
proof I wasn’t the only boy
who thought the world a phony mess.
By seventeen, George Eliot
showed the depths of interior lives.
At eighteen, Albert Camus
poured absurdity into my veins
cruel, brilliant, alive.
At nineteen, Richard Wright’s
Native Son seared me raw;
I felt the machinery of race grind on.
And Ian McEwan,
with his scalpel for desire and cruelty,
has walked beside me ever since.
In my twenties, the poets arrived.
Dylan Thomas with thunder on his tongue,
W. H. Davies, tramp-turned-bard,
giving voice to the road’s forgotten.
Those shelves were my escape route
– doorways rather than sermons –
each book a lifeboat on the ocean of literacy,
each page a comrade.
.
I built a new chapel there:
Huck at the pulpit,
Orwell in the choir,
Dickens on the steps with orphans like us.
Thomas ringing the bells,
holy and drunk.
While chapel hymns fell flat,
The library sang
and still sings in me.
I found a tunnel to dance through,
a world made new:
no crammed, illogical dogma,
but a theme park, a festival,
a circus where my mind could revel.
I landed on an island
where the Bible, battle lost,
asked only for my generosity
which abounds
when I know I can choose,
and when I know, I have nothing to lose.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
familiar past the point of boredom.
The way led to the House of God.
Ten, twenty, thirty children,
all under sixteen
marched as prisoners
to sing and listen to Jesus,
who never answered
our prayers for a mum and dad
to care, or to care for.
.
Books, it was,
that broke bewilderment,
that offered the key
to end imprisonment.
They lifted me
from baffled thoughtlessness.
Before that,
ambition tied to ignorance
left me gullible.
I swallowed sorcery from tricksters,
when licence was offered, I took liberties,
I clutched prejudice to a proud heart,
and sought revenge
mistaking it for justice.
.
Then I found Aberdare’s new library,
top of Canon Street, huge and glassy.
Not the cramped Wesleyan chapel next door
where Sunday folk dropped pennies
into a box they hardly believed in.
No lungs strained for hymns there.
Prayers mumbled and stale
floated up each Sunday
only to fall on stony ground
by Monday.
The contrast was plain:
the threat of righteous censure
against the liberty of shelves.
No contest.
.
The library became my cathedral.
Imagination rang its bells.
Books unlocked the gate.
By six, Enid Blyton gave me gangs;
the Famous Five, the Secret Seven,
comrades in mystery and mischief.
By seven, Dickens pressed in,
filling my head with orphans, villains,
hunger and law courts,
a world too close to mine.
At nine, Alexandre Dumas,
swashbuckles and swords
against the grey of chapel hymns.
At ten, Jack London’s wolves and sailors,
men wrestling ice and hunger.
I believed him.
At eleven, Fenimore Cooper’s wild frontiers
where betrayal and survival tangled.
At twelve, I hid with Edmond Dantès,
learning revenge and patience,
then drifted downriver with Huck Finn
into questions grown-ups never answered.
Orwell was waiting,
his words sharp as glass.
I never let him go.
By fourteen, Harper Lee
was my secret shield.
Scout’s wide eyes,
Atticus’s weary honour,
whispers that justice was fragile,
but not impossible.
At fifteen, Hardy’s hollow lanes
where passion bled into ruin.
At sixteen, Steinbeck’s dust and grapes,
labourers breaking under hunger,
their pain written plain.
Holden Caulfield sulked nearby,
proof I wasn’t the only boy
who thought the world a phony mess.
By seventeen, George Eliot
showed the depths of interior lives.
At eighteen, Albert Camus
poured absurdity into my veins
cruel, brilliant, alive.
At nineteen, Richard Wright’s
Native Son seared me raw;
I felt the machinery of race grind on.
In my twenties, the poets arrived.
Dylan Thomas with thunder on his tongue,
W. H. Davies, tramp-turned-bard,
giving voice to the road’s forgotten.
And Ian McEwan,
with his scalpel for desire and cruelty,
has walked beside me ever since.
Those shelves were my escape route
– doorways rather than sermons –
each book a lifeboat on the ocean of literacy,
each page a comrade.
.
I built a new chapel there:
Huck at the pulpit,
Orwell in the choir,
Dickens on the steps with his orphans,
Thomas ringing the bells,
holy and drunk.
While chapel hymns fell flat,
The library sang
and still sings in me.
I found a tunnel to dance through,
a world made new:
no crammed, illogical dogma,
but a theme park, a festival,
a circus where my mind could revel.
I landed on an island
where the Bible, battle lost,
asked only for my generosity
which abounds
when I know I can choose,
and when I know, I have nothing to lose.
—————————————
B
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.
,
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At
At
with Edmond Dantès,
The Count of Monte Cristo
learning revenge and patience.
and
The same year Huck Finn
paddled into my life,
showing me how a boy and a runaway slave
could float downriver into questions
grown-ups couldn’t answer.
Orwell was already waiting,
with words that cut like glass.
I never let him go.
By fourteen I carried
Harper Lee
like a secret shield.
S
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The words of Peter Akinwunmi (Peter Ak'i) 