openly
one can
in our new
democracy

(on the Kapp bookshelf
Felix Greene’s The Enemy
hid clandestinely inside of
a Hemingway cover)

show off
lugging around
books openly
(because now we can)

rulers all over
have too condemned
sections of its dwellers
to mis-education

(to being hewers of wood
and drawers of water)

the said books
rescued from a pulping
obtained courtesy
of the Friends of Central Library
(at their monthly Poetry Circle)

the said books
novels translated
into German
(a Frederick Forsyth
amongst them)

out here many children
(in particular the poor)
do not have a book
to read at home
(German or otherwise)

(though Cubans poor
as they are are literate and healthy
despite the world around them
trumping even those near neighbours)

so
I show off