See how the Fates their gifts allot,

For A is happy; B is not.

				      —The Mikado
At Maud Cahill’s bookshop I produce a list

of books I’d sooner sell than keep on seeing

on my shelves. It’s time that dust returned to dust.
I know the story, otherwise: they’ll stand

together, till the final purge of all, when heirs

will toss out Kees and Bishop, Pope and Sappho 
in the same box with this sad lot who have hung out

on the sidewalks of the mind to beg for cash.

Perhaps their trash is others’ treasure. Maybe 
there are people who, determined to have

one of every book that has been printed,

dream of making life-sized pyramids of paper: 
who can say? Clive James composed a psalm

of joy to see his enemy’s book remaindered.

I’ve more charity, took pity on the homeless, 
brought them in until they nudged aside my friends.

I tell Maud, strike out the ones you never wish

to see. She goes, predictably, to those 
I first set down; Ronald, Lynda, Steven, Di,

you others: be advised, the Great Recycler

is at hand. Not for you the antiquarian 
dealer, nor suburban op-shop bin. There are more

ways to cure depression – mine, or any future reader’s:

you shall be made one with nature, part 
of that infinitude of atoms whence you came.

Your fractured dactyls will go flapping to the earth

to keep down weeds rank as yourself; you boys
who entered like a military band performing Sousa

will go out like that last horse’s tail that leaves

with its last flourish nothing but the scent behind.