Give Me a Book

“Give Me a Book”

Give me a book

And long tall grass

There will I look

As the hours pass

To other places

I can see;

To other faces

strange to me.

In black and white

They fill my head

With men and women--

Vanished, dead—

Of hopes and fears

of wish and need.

The world stands still,

I breathless read,

And in their history

I see

The untold mystery

of me.

Myra Cohn Livingston