Poetry for sitting in the library:

Dunce in Bocardo

He stands in the Violet shadow
By the scribbled wall
And sticks his finger in every Tudor eye.

The pen is dry, the shadow
Is deeper, the fool
Quits the sleeping pricne.

Cranmer's pears are sleepy, Pole
In Westminster nibbles Luther, heretics
Are sword-swallowers, eaters of fire.

In the apple-tree the blackbird
Whistles his belief, tailors
Catch snails, huntsmen chase
The owl in the holly-tree.

Now comes the violet night, the lewd
Citizens creep, then run, then snatch at glosses in blind corners

And kisses: Grape Street is dark.
From grope to grape by Bowlder's Law,
Then back to grope by ius positivum.

Sweet Isis, you run softly
Through the future's unimagin
able inscape

Id quod oculis meis vidi.

-- Richard Layton