From shelves and racks, or lying in stacks, Books,
Of all ages and epochs—adolescents and youths,
Aged and venerable, and e’en those in decrepitude,
Much eloquent, but in all silence, share with us
Experiences wide ranging, emotions well pent up,
Passions, love and hate, and joys and sufferings,
Triumphs, failings, histories, biographies and maxims.
A pat or stroke, or appeal in awe, or in supplication,
They’d unleash to you, in varied moods and temper,
Their stories, in letters, words, phrases, sentences;
In prose or verse on folios, or in acts and scenes,
Of Helens, Quixotes, Falstaffs, Holmes and Othellos,
In the highs and lows of their pleasures and pathos,
Of Lears, Tristans and Isoldes, and procrastinators.
Of the plucks and spirits of Arjunas and Achilleses,
Of the failings of the ill-fated Kareninas and Bovaries,
Of the unwavering faith of Jobs, Noahs and Abrahams,
Of the lovelorn Sakunthalas, and Sitas under Simsupa,
Of God’s Garden, and of the wisdom of the Himalaya,
They speak in silence, of the real and the imagined,
As mighty godlike genies waiting for our summons!