Scribo Scribere

This short short plays with Chaucer and Beowulf.



When Chaucer becomes so much on your mind

you begin to wonder where Chaucer went

Ibsen left the books on the table in the library then skipped out. One book was green, one red. The green was Chaucer. On the cover was a seated scholar, reading a book that could only have been Chaucer’s too. The red book was Beowulf: no one knows who wrote that.

Time was strange to Ibsen when he stepped out of the library under the trees, and from the trees off the curb onto the avenue, where others had parked cars, then forgotten them. Where are they, Ibsen thought. I do not know where they have gone.

Ibsen had left the books because he didn’t need books anymore. There comes a point for everyone when she wakes up one day, realizing he knows Chaucer already. That every word Beowulf ever said is inside her. Ibsen could say Whan that Aprille, stellifye me, That King Priamus’ Son was of Troy. Exactly he remembered them. Chaucer really gets inside you.

Ibsen stepped out, leaving green Chaucer and red Beowulf. If you go into the library, you will see them and understand Ibsen has gone somewhere time does not. Ibsen has gone where Chaucer went when he wrote the book he gave to Ibsen when he saw him on the avenue where the cars were parked which people had forgotten to get books in the library (both red and green), forgetting they no longer needed libraries as Chaucer was already inside them, and Beowulf would be on their minds until time stood still.