A college town’s homely trove of used books
names itself with an old Latin warning
a dare that’s lost on us two
you especially, charging wide-eyed
the proverbial kid set loose in a candy store
stretching, hunching, kneeling, crawling
for the sweet and gooey Dante and Holderlin
pungent and pure in their original language
while I, invisible to you, pluck my all-Americans
wishing their disdained “accessibility”
might translate to a marriage of two minds
whose impediments, alas, dwarf these stacks
leaving the best bargain I can make
the one you’ve long since struck:
Beware of nothing but leaving anything unspent
Dan Carpenter Literarium 