In Defense of the Book
Matthew Byrne

Did the book enrich you?
I would say the book enriched me.
Can you prove the book enriched you?
No, by no method I know can I prove the book enriched me.
Then I can only conclude that the book entertains
in the manner of, say, a television program.
I have beheld television programs which ranged
from the vulgar to the sublime, but never did they scale
to such perilous heights as the book, you have my word.
You are deft of speech, do you know this?
A gift I owe in no small measure to the book.
Is it conceivable that the book has rendered you too smart
for your own good?
Come again?
Unable to identify with the common man, for example.
I suppose a certain loneliness afflicts me.
You are a sad sack indeed.
An inordinate amount of sadness resides in me, true.
Does the book not teach you to be happy?
The book swings like a pendulum between poles, never resting
on any one feeling long enough to be labeled this or that.
Sounds willy-nilly, messy.
One connects the dots and reaps the fruits.
Such work is a luxury only academics and the jobless can afford.
You'd prefer to lay back and have the book done to you?
I am fighting the urge to smite you.
I am terrified of being smote.
Does the book not believe in an afterlife?
It can scarcely be said that the book believes in the lives
we have at present, much less in a celestial life beyond.
So the conversation we are having at present is not happening?
It is probably not happening.
It feels very much like it is happening.
Nothingness wears many costumes.
One man's costume is another man's outfit.

© Matthew Byrne