Title is a line from Dessa’s song “Velodrome.”
Somewhere out there are the post-war Polish poets,
And a collection of words and letters and numbered pages,
The sum total of which adds up to the number of angels
Who can dance on the head of the pin,
A subject which is doubtless covered in an encyclopedia
Of the 13th century’s most beautifully ludicrous ideas.
Somewhere out there is the chronology of the world after Christ,
And an anthology that leans too much towards the avant-garde
For my liking; somewhere is the book I will never read,
The one that is softly and silently calling my name, now,
The one that no one has picked up in so many years
That the dust is thicker than the pages;
The one that has not voice enough to speak,
Yet I can still hear her –
She who has world enough and time
To encompass both Marvell and his mistress,
Whose coyness has faded like the pages
Over time immemorial,
And whose final letter
Begins and ends
With an ‘a’ for the apology
She is asking for,
And the one she is providing,
Proving,
Once and for all –
That if ever you hear a pin drop,
The number of angels waltzing atop it
Was no fewer than the number of books
You will look upon, without truly seeing.
