.04) A Galaxy Past Gutenberg

In the glass case, a Gutenberg bible— only three like it left in the world. Surprising myself, I started to cry, there in the Library of Congress, as though we were seeing a Platonic form instead of a physical thing. In a sense, the millions of books in this and every library, in all the Barnes & Nobles' and Borders' and the ones on my bookshelves at home all descended from this book. In a glass case nearby an almost identical bible, handwritten by scribes, took years to produce— a labor of love, no doubt, but Gutenberg granted every poet the dream that his own words in print might encircle the world. (Now I'll go home and type this and click. It will un-write itself into a flow of electrons like the ones in my brain that gave it birth, a swarm of bees speeding across the world to rearrange themselves a few seconds later so these words can form on your screen.)