The books of Baghdad

For those of us made
with Dewey decimal brains
and card catalogue hands

books are shelved
from left to right
top to bottom
end of story
full stop

but books have ever been
in different shapes and sizes
so what to do
if you're a librarian
with limited space
who would prefer that nobody touch
a book or misshelve or mislay
or fail to return part
of the collection

you can put them
in special collections
with limited hours
and restricted access
and hand out cotton gloves
and forbid pen and ink
and the cracking of spines

which you can justify
for manuscripts and books
of a certain age
but for the rest
there are the stacks
usually open access
and always jam packed

for such spaces
books have been shelved
in a variety of ways
all on shelves
of the same height
with larger books slid in spines up
shelf marks face up
to the front

but in earlier times
books were shelved by size
largest and tallest on the bottom
shortest and smallest on the top
but between the Machiavelli and More duodecimos

and the Harrington and Plato folios

must be shelved the Locke and Montesquieu octavos

and the Ferguson and Smith quartos

but where to put the Audubon double elephant folio

perhaps lay it flat

and when Dewey decimal hands
shake and fail and drop
remember how much better it is
to navigate a library
with books
than to have a Mongol horde

ransack
as they did the library of Baghdad
in the 13th Century
to make a bridge
and how the ink bled
to make the river run blue
after 7 days and 7 nights
of ponies trampling the purloined books
under foot.