Re(En)Vision Day 27: Kim Roberts

 
The Book
(Original Version)

 The book is a torso,
             a mutilated hulk
                         of limbless stone—
 but whether fragmented
             by time or by origin,
                         by mistake or by design,
 is hard to tell.
             An artifact
                         standing in a field of rubble
 whose ransacked gaps we work
             to re-gather and mend,
                         a symbol
 of all that is missing,
             the remnant world distilled.
                         The book is a ruin,
 a suffering body.
             It erodes like a landscape.
                         The book salves the sadness
 of the bygone, eloquent
             in decay, singing
                         vacant asylums,
 desolated harbors,
             amputated silence:
                         its torso anthem. 

 Torso Anthem
 (Re(En)Visioned)

 The book is a mutilated hulk,
 limbless, but whether fragmented
 by mistake or by design:
 hard to tell.
 Standing in a field, 
 
 rubble’s ransacked gaps 
 work to re-gather the symbol;
 all is missing, the remnant 
 distilled. The book
 is ruin, a suffering body,
 
 eroding like a landscape.
 Books salve the sadness.
 The bygone is eloquent
 in singing vacant asylums,
 desolated harbors, amputated silence.

 © 2020 Kim Roberts

The original version was first published in Re)Verb. 

Kim Roberts is the author of A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018), and five books of poems, most recently The Scientific Method (WordTech Editions, 2017). She is the editor of By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (forthcoming from the University of Virginia Press, October 2020), and co-edits the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes. http://www.kimroberts.org

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review