A poem by Tal Al-Mallouhi

This is a reposting of Tal Al-Mallouhi’s You will remain an example, dedicated to Gandhi. Tal’s story is linked here.

There is another post which I wish refer to in brief, it is called Books written , ‘The Library of Babel‘ and it is by Borges. This short fiction from Borges’ Labyrinths, describes a mythological library of great density, proportion, and uniform. The library exists ab aeterno , from the eternal.

It contains everything ever written, expressed , or conceived in all languages, including , ” false catalogues and the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues.” The link I have included in the second short paragraph of this post looks at the design of the fictive Babel Library.

I like to think of it as an almost entirely true tale , as so many books of wisdom have been destroyed or made inaccessible by people who find human thought to be an inconvenience to their wishes and plans. The narrator of the library is an old man, who intends to die there amongst the books, he recounts his searches, his attempts to translate the orthography of the library and his relation to books in the piece.

A good friend in Catalunya once wrote an amazing piece on book-burning centred in the celebration of St Jordi’s Day, when people give to each other books and roses. I have not his excellent writing ability, but I do tend  to believe that the books  not written  in this instance, will not stop her words emerging or her book from existing.

Words when uttered and written cannot not be taken back and must have their effect. There is something wholly infantile about banning and brutalising a youthful poet, I think it may be because the words used to commit the brutalisation have become empty of their validity and symbolism for a great many people. The same goes for those people who wish to censor the great Walt Whitman from classrooms in CA, you do not encourage critical discernment by labelling books of genius as ‘bad’ because the singer of the poems was gay!