The Book

• A3 pencil drawing

"We are not deprived of this: Reading

And breathlessly turning the sheet
Far away from everyday life

Those who read may be lonely beings
They were that from childhood on

Them beckons the world there where the big ones
The timeless, persist

To whom, we small ones, may go
The only ones who will never cast us away"

Ida Gerhardt
From "collected poems"
Amsterdam, Athenaeum-Polak
& Van Gennep, 1980