`Comfort and Restore'

Yesterday, my first day as a university science writer, I produced nothing of worth and went home exhausted from nerves, sinus infection and Houston in July. I worked in a brief visit to the campus library, which is undergoing renovation so books are scattered all over the building, but I managed to find everything I wanted: Loving Dr. Johnson, by Helen Deutsch; Collected Poems 1943-1995, by Gwen Harwood; The Last Jew, by Yoram Kaniuk; Autobiographies, by R.S. Thomas. Walking back to my car, under the live oaks, through the long shadows and the whirring of cicadas, I was tired and headachy but pleased with the burden of good books in my briefcase. Here’s a Harwood poem, “On Books”:

“As the hymn says, a thousand ages
can vanish like an evening gone.
Time takes away the saints and sages,
the sinners too. We travel on
with time itself, awake or sleeping,
knowing we have no means of keeping
from time one single night or day.
But some things time can’t take away:
Our language, our imagination.
A world beyond the fugitive
world we must lose can wake and live
for this and any generation.
It’s there: you only have to look
inside the cover of a book.

“Books have their live: you leave them lying
at night in their accustomed place,
then find that they’ve been multiplying –
no bookshelf has sufficient space.
Leave an unwanted book behind you –
Useless! It travels back to find you.
Sometimes in trouble or despair
You look for solace, and it’s there:
The book you need is right before you,
and opens up as if it knew
what it was meant to offer you.
A book can comfort and restore you,
But need one just to prove you’re right
And it will linger out of sight.

“An infant in my cradle, beaming
at Farmyard Friends, -- just yesterday
it seems – I saw the magic gleaming
from books, and still they light my way.
Though I don’t want to sound alarmist
I’ve heard the stern words of the psalmist
And soon will have a birthday when
I reach the dread three score and ten.
Pray that my goose-quill find employment.
As long as I have wits and eyes
may I record the things I prize.
And for this time of pure enjoyment,
this luncheon in the Albert Hall,
my host, my friends, I thank you all.”

Harwood dedicates the poem “To the Tasmanian branch of the National Book Council, April 1990.” She was born in Australia on June 8, 1920, and died on Dec.9, 1995.