Armory

We suppose you could make the argument
No one ever burns what they know to be
Self-evidently truly valuable—

If there’s a recipe for weaponry
Among the collected works of authors
Authorities ban, those pages get saved.

And you might be better off, if it all
Burned and became indecipherable.
Was life so terrible before writing?

What is it about us you want to save
So badly you see burning libraries
As tragedies akin to genocide?

Nothing in these lines, to be sure. Maybe
It’s just the feeling of an alternate
Reality hidden in cryptic scripts,

The sense that all writing’s esoteric—
Because it has to be learned, can’t be shared
As communally as the spoken word,

Script carries a bit of mystery, still,
Like math, incantation, astronomy.
Maybe we’re all recipes, weaponry.