The Cloths of Heaven

Caroline crossed the street and headed towards the library, her shoulders hunched against the cold and wet. The lines of a poem ran through her mind

“I hear leaves drinking rain;

I hear rich leaves on top,

Giving the poor beneath

Drop after drop” (1)

She had inherited this activity from her mother, along with her love of the library. For her mother it was song lyrics; she would suddenly burst into a song which fitted the situation or echoed a word someone had uttered. Caroline nowadays took it one step further, following her study of literature at the university in this pretty, yellow-stoned city. So, when touched by the world in some way, poetry would trickle through her mind, like the rain now did down the back of her collar.

Caroline remembered a time when her mother had burst into song in the library, sending herself into fits of giggles so bad that the oldest, sternest librarian had approached them. The woman, twinset and pearls, like a caricature of librarians of old, had waved an inky finger at them and mouthed a reprimand. Caroline was mesmerised by the wagging digit, and the ink from the date stamps, which the small girl longed to use. Caroline dreamt of standing behind the Books Out desk wielding the power of the date stamp and running the books under her fingers, giving the ultimate gift of reading to those who approached. Thus diverted, the librarian’s scolding did nothing to dampen Caroline, or her mother’s, love of the building and all it contained.

Now, as then, the library building, with its neoclassical columns and tall lighted windows, presented a welcoming sight to her as she made for the brass doors and entered the atrium. The uniformed doorman received her smile with a touch of the brim of his hat and a nod of his head as she turned down her collar and ascended up the sweep of the staircase, towards the library proper. This seemed to Caroline to be a true library, not a 1960s carbuncle, but a palace of learning and of words. Not only the building spoke to her though, as she swept through the rows of shelves, but the sight and smell of the books themselves, the glorious tomes, leather clad and gold embossed. She recalled so many times she had waited for her mother to select her eight books, running her fingers along the creased spines of romantic paperbacks, which she would devour within a week, necessitating a return journey. Caroline would find a quiet corner, a comfy chair and open the book she had selected. She would bring it to her nose, inhaling the unique perfume, and check the colour of the binding strips at the top and bottom of the spines, which hid the sewing of the pages beneath them. Sometimes, with an old, heavy book, she would lay it out on a dark wooden table and run her fingers over the pages with her eyes closed, feeling the impression on the creamy paper, made by the old metal type method used to print them.

At first she tried the same novels as her mother, Barbara Cartland or Catherine Cookson, but she soon moved on and on, to Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, then to Arthur Conan Doyle and HG Wells, savouring the images these works conjured in her mind and the escape provided from the hardness of the world outside the library, felt by a soul as sensitive as hers. And so, inexorably, she answered the siren call of the poetry section: from Shakespeare’s odes to his dark lady, through Keats’s to a nightingale, and Wordsworth’s daffodils, she devoured them all, from the romantic and lyrical to the furious and political, from Dylan Thomas to W B Yeats, and in them found a voice and a release.

"The still pools reflection, what clarity, within its deepest depths it holds?

Until a trouble mind bestirs, silts of time. Looking for what else unfolds." (2)

Now, she longed to curl up with a thin volume by Sylvia Plath or Louis MacNeice in one of those comfy chairs, to look up and catch a smile from her mother, acknowledging that they were in their happy place, but mother had gone and Caroline had serious business to attend to in the library today. Her mother’s funeral had taken place just before Caroline had sat her final exams, and she had promised at the graveside to do well, which she had, and to live the life her mother might have lived if she had not been left alone to raise Caroline, by an uncaring partner, who Caroline had never met. So, instead of finding comfort today, Caroline sat at the desk in the centre of the library, beneath the stained glass cupola, and pulled a newspaper towards her to start scouring the Wanted ads for the vacancy that would set her on her chosen path.

"remember this is not a shadow play

of doves and geese but this is now

the time to write it down, record the words"(3)

Several others, like Caroline, came most days to worship at the altar of employment and hope that that would be the day they would find the right fit. She had engaged some of the regulars in conversation, near the coffee machine in a side room, and now nodded to a middle aged woman, with frizzy grey hair escaping a pink beret.

“Any luck lately, Caroline?” Liz asked in a hushed voice, and Caroline gave her a wry smile and a shrug in answer.

After about half an hour, she saw him, the image of Heathcliffe or Darcy or Noah Calhoun, dark hair touselled and jewelled with rain.

"She walks in beauty like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies

And all that’s best of dark and light

Meets in her aspect and his eyes."(4)

As she ran the words around her head, tasting them like savour on the tongue, she realised she had stopped breathing, and deliberately let out a slow breath. She could no longer hear the murmur of library voices, the faint clang of steps being positioned, the gentle rustle of pages being turned, but only her own heart beating in iambic pentameter.

Suddenly, he turned from the enquiry desk and gazed straight at her. She was all of a fluster, and blushing, looked down at the blur of the newspaper. He walked towards her and she found she was trembling. Then he walked past her, without a glance she thought, towards the poetry section, taking her heart with him.

She struggled to her feet and walked on weak legs towards the toilets, telling herself to get a grip.

"The grip on my heart

Tightens with each squeeze.

The love I once felt

Slowly drains within me." (5)

She splashed her face with cold water and wetting a hankie, patted the back of her neck, using the other hand to lift her light brown hair. She then went and got herself a hot chocolate, the most palatable beverage available, and drinking it down in gulps, hoped it would have a calming effect on her.

"After all of my hardships of trudging and plodding

After all of my doubts

And After all of my seemingly endless struggles, I came across a stream of magical hot chocolate." (6)

The chocolate did its magic and Caroline made her way back to her seat, trying to crane her neck without it being too noticeable, to catch another glimpse of the Adonis. The poetry section was empty. She slumped down into her chair, so heavily the others seated at the table glanced up and one or two smiled.

Liz leant forward and whispered, “I found your note on the floor, so I put it in your coat pocket," then went back to perusing the columns of the paper on her desk.

“Thank you” Caroline mouthed, puzzled. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her raincoat, which was hanging limp and damp on the back of her chair, and felt a sheet of paper. Removing it, it turned out to be an envelope, which was empty and torn open. The envelope was blue, faded at the edges, but the colour was more vivid in the centre, as though it had been stored underneath something smaller than itself. On the front, incredibly, Caroline’s name was written in a copperplate hand. She stared at it for a few minutes, her mind a whirl. Then she turned it over and discovered, written on the reverse, two lines from a poem by W B Yeats

"I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." (7)

Caroline’s mind was racing. This message must be for her, it had her name on it, but who had sent it and why. Could it be from the Adonis? She hardly dared to hope, but he had been in the poetry section. What did it mean? A declaration of love? How could it be? But she had been struck, pierced, so suddenly, perhaps he had too. The sensible, rational girl said it couldn’t be possible, but the romantic, poetry loving, lonely orphan girl wanted to believe, so much. She gazed down at the envelope again.

"I heard a cry in the night,

A thousand miles it came,

Sharp as a flash of light,

My name, my name!" (8)

Underneath the poetry was written the word Honeydew, the time 2.30pm, and today’s date. Honeydew was the coffee shop opposite the library on the busy Oxford street. A meeting? Caroline held the envelope to her heart in a gesture suitable for a Dickens’ heroine. She glanced at her watch. 2.45. Oh God! What if he had been waiting, but she hadn’t turned up! She had to take a chance. One chance, what could she lose? She had already lost her heart.

"If I could speak words of water,

You would drown when I said

'I love you.'" (9)

She gathered up her things and rushed from the library. It was still raining, but she didn’t have time to put on her raincoat. She splashed across the street to Honeydew. The little cafe was crowded with people waiting out the storm. She couldn’t see Adonis at first. Every seat seemed to be taken, but then she spotted him at a table in the far corner, with a spare seat waiting for her. She made her way across, weaving between tables and past customers. As she approached, she noticed he was talking to someone, an old lady with neat bobbed hair who was smiling sadly back at him. Caroline stopped short, unsure what to do. Adonis seemed to be reading to the woman from a book and now Caroline noticed quiet tears falling from the woman’s eyes and being caught with a pretty, lace-bordered handkerchief.

Caroline was about the turn and leave, unwilling to intrude, when Adonis turned and saw her and smiled. It was such a beautiful smile, she couldn’t help but return it. Then he spoke, his voice like a balm.

“Oh, hello,” he said simply and then paused, “Do you need somewhere to sit? You can sit here if you like”.

He pulled out the chair next to him and indicated that she should sit. Then the woman spoke.

“I’m sorry dear” she said to Adonis, “I’ll just visit the ladies and clean myself up. I’m being silly”.

Adonis reached over and squeezed her hand, “No, you’re not, Mum” he said, “Just sweet as usual...shall I order another pot?”

“Ah yes please, dear” the woman answered, “Nothing like tea to buck a person up.”

Then she turned to Caroline and smiled, “Oh do join us dear, it will be nice to chat to someone new”.

"When you were there, and you, and you,

Happiness crowned the night; I too,

Laughing and looking, one of all,

I watched the quivering lamplight fall

On plate and flowers and pouring tea

And cup and cloth;" (10)

Caroline, in a bit of a daze, took the offered seat and gave Adonis a small, shy smile.

“You were in the library just now, weren’t you? I, er...um..noticed you.”

Caroline nodded, "I noticed you too,” she admitted, and blushed.

“And now fate, and the weather had brought us together,” he said, shining his smile upon her again and warming her.

She was puzzled, surely it was the note that brought them together. She flapped it at him. It was soggy from the rain and wilted.

“Oh, you brought my note back, that’s so kind, but I found the book I needed.” He showed her the book of Yeats’s poetry on the table in front of him, open to the page for The Cloths of Heaven. “It was my dad’s favourite poem. I prefer Dylan Thomas myself. 'And death shall have no dominion'. Mum wants me to read the Yeats at his funeral next week, hence the tears. They’d been together so long, it is so hard for her to be alone now”

"Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion." (11)

The woman came back, noticing, with a smile, the body language between the two young people, and hoping that they too would have a long and happy life together, in the way mothers always hope for their children. She hoped they would “tread carefully” on each other’s dreams as she and her husband had always done.

“Well son, what about introductions?” she said, resuming her seat.

“Oh yes,” he said, shaking Caroline’s hand, “I’m Michael”.

“I’m Caroline,” she replied, shaking back and smiling.

“Well, what a coincidence” said the old lady, “That’s my name too”.

"I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death." (12)

Poems from www.poemhunter.com

1. The Rain: William Henry Davies

2. Two Poems of Two Lines: Mark Heathcote

3. My Generation Reading the Newspapers: Kenneth Patchen

4. She walks in Beauty: George Gordon Byron

5. The Grip on my Heart: Candika Niada

6, A River of Hot Chocolate and a Lake of Hot Soup: S.E. Hawks

7. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven: William Butler Yeats

8. Message: Sara Teasdale

9. If I Could Write Words: Spike Milligan

10. Dining-Room Tea: Rupert Brook

11. And Death Shall Have no Dominion: Dylan Thomas

12. How Do I Love Thee?: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

www.poemhunter.com