Prose to Poetry

(Re-aranging lines of prose: already poetry)

The BookShop by H Le Roux Slabbert –  Sunday 19 Oct 2008 (23:00) , Klerksdorp (bed)

Based on: Bookshop (Patience Strong 1930)

I know a little bookshop
in a quiet alleyway,
with books all scattered
-a pittyful array

in rows of shelves outside
-of volumes faded, tattered
…and they look me in the face:
“Once we were wanted, once we had a place”,
they seem to say.
Poor waifs and strays!

My heart goes out.
I’d like to give each one a home,
pressed close against my wall.
To shelter them beneath my roof
in a warm and fire lit nooks.

who would not take compassion
of these lonely orphaned books!

How can folks make them come to this?
A Book can be a friend –
and after many years a faithful service
-what a dismal end!

… All jumbled up together
like good and bad weather (*1)
no choice they had to mix –
imagine being twopence:
when you’re really three-and-six (*2)

H Le Roux Slabbert (remixer…)

Sunday 19 Oct 2008 (23:00) , Klerksdorp (bed)

South Africa

Based on: The Quiet Hour, London 1983 (11th imprint 1957, p45)

Notes:

1) Only addition to this lovely poem is the rhyme word “weather”. Patience string wrote prose- but all the sentences have rhyme words, except this line (no 25 in the poem).

2) “On sale” Alas in life the elderly gets “pushed out”, neglected…