In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library burned, Susan Orlean.
It started in the vast periodicals of their memories,
which were divided by their acquisition in time,
though the finer sorting and shelving
had grown dubious of late. From there it spread.
To reference, and the encyclopedias with the one volume
the world might yet cry out for someday.
Next, biography. Their own, of course, but see
how the flames also licked at certain chapters from
the lives of others they’d known, gone for good in a flash.
Here was a roomful of maps that could have been
useful to one journeying later in the same latitudes,
but which now are merely bound in an atlas of ash.
Even the fictions they published to others and themselves
are gone to smoke that friends hereafter
will wish could be reeled back. There was
a little philosophy here, much humor, and
shelves in the shadows that were waiting silently
for lights to be switched on. Here’s one fewer place
where you can go to flee confusion, choose a corner,
and lose, and find, yourself in.
