Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Poem of the week: The Beautiful Librarians by Sean O’Brien

A nostalgic homage to the glory of libraries and librarians harnesses Larkin and Keats to point up our lost visions of social betterment

Allerton Library Liverpool
‘Ice queens in their realms of gold’ … frosty custodians become genuinely regal. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

The Beautiful Librarians

The beautiful librarians are dead,
The fairly recent graduates who sat
Like Françoise Hardy’s shampooed sisters
With cardigans across their shoulders
On quiet evenings at the issue desk,
Stamping books and never looking up
At where I stood in adoration.

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