Title: The Book

Author: Bernadette Hall

In: Sport 40: 2012

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 40: 2012

The Book

The Book

And now, dear reader, we’re all here, including the handsome boy with the scar on his cheek who’s looking over the translation. His bold eyes, the way he looks back at his friends, see I’ve got as far as this and she with her face turned down to the book, the blood rising in her cheeks, in her neck, silent and still inside her strange heat.

As if the stories precede the reality, as if she’s getting ready.

Maybe she’ll shift to the old house in the city, to the big cool room with the Indian cloth at the foot of the bed, the spidery scrolls, the curves and leaping lines and buds and small insects. Maybe she’ll disappear the same way Sylvie disappeared for a year, so hampered was she by all those boys. Made heavy where she should be light, made solid where she should be translucent, made dumb where she should be singing, made a liar.

For the mouth of the book is no more than the mouth of the maker, its bitterness is her bitterness, its cowardice is her cowardice, its love of the crumbling damp earth is her love, and of the little red thorns that prick up their ears on the rose stems. And there she goes again, making a big deal of everything.