The book is a torso,

   a mutilated hulk

      of limbless stone—

but whether fragmented

   by time or by origin,

      by mistake or by design,

is hard to tell.

   An artifact

      standing in a field of rubble

whose ransacked gaps we work

   to re-gather and mend,

      a symbol

of all that is missing,

   the remnant world distilled.

      The book is a ruin,

a suffering body.

   It erodes like a landscape.

      The book salves the sadness

of the bygone, eloquent

   in decay, singing

      vacant asylums,

desolated harbors,

   amputated silence:

      its torso anthem.