One sits and reads, and the hours pass, and this passing seems not loss but a kind of staying. - adapted from Virginia Woolf’s notebooks
The library was not a building
Light settled itself into quiet.
The back corner existed
because thought prefers margins
and forgives being overlooked.
Whittier was no longer a book.
New England had entered the room -
severity without haste,
a winter that knows how to stay.
The page did not hurry.
Neither did I.
A door closed somewhere.
A name was called, then struck through.
Biology thinned to pulse,
economics to the slow expense of hours,
theology to a question misfiled.
Time learned patience.
Then the Demon of the Study -
no smoke, no spectacle -
took the empty chair.
A presence expert at sitting.
It lowered the lamp slightly,
as if the night were generous.
It did not resist the work.
It approved of it.
Reading adopted the posture of delay.
Sentences improved
by remaining unfinished.
I knew it then.
Whittier must have known it too,
this elbow at the desk,
this companion that resembles conscience
closely enough to be trusted.
Across years and quiet rooms,
we had shared the same visitor.
Books made space for it.
Reason adjusted.
Prayer passed through,
politely acknowledged.
Even effort, tired of standing,
sat down and stopped counting.
Under its guidance,
stillness thickened.
The desk edge pressed into my arm.
The chair learned my weight.
Margins filled with careful nothing,
the kind that passes for thought.
The Demon was not cruel.
Only agreeable.
Boredom refined into method,
delay dignified as discipline.
A practice without end,
kept faithfully by those
who believe too much in staying.
When the book finally closed,
the room did not protest.
The lamp remained on.
The chair stayed warm.
The page waited
where I had left it -
not accusing,
just open,
as if Whittier himself
might return at any moment
and sit with me awhile,
content to lose another hour
to the pleasure
of not yet beginning.
GBS jr
1983
Author’s Note
This poem began one afternoon in the back corner of my college library. I was supposed to be somewhere else; Biology, Economics, Theology; but instead I stayed put in an overstuffed chair that smelled faintly of stale smoke and aftershave, reading Whittier’s New England Legends slowly enough to lose the hour, then the day. The library became less a place than a condition, and staying there felt, however briefly, like the most serious thing I could be doing.
By the time I reached The Demon of the Study, I realized the poem was describing me back to myself: the lowered lamp, the elbow at the desk, the sense of purpose that comes not from finishing, but from remaining attentive. This poem looks back on that moment with gratitude and a little humor, interested in the comfort of staying, the pleasure of almost beginning, and the way seriousness can resemble devotion long before it turns into action.
GBS jr
2026
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