For the rest of her life,
She would always remember
A conversation with her mother,
When she was quite young,
About the ancient Library of Alexandria.

Of course,
Its mysterious end
And legendary history
Fascinated her,
But more intriguing, by far,
Was the notion that
A librarian could also be
An astronomer, a poet, a mystic, a literary scholar …
As was Aristarchus of Samothrace,
The last of Alexandria’s librarians
To be recorded by name,
Who edited Homer,
And helped collect and edit
All of Sappho’s nine books.

When,
As a young woman,
Approaching modern Alexandria by boat,
Memories of bombed Dresden behind her,
She wondered if she would dream that night
Of Hypatia,
The great fifth-century A.D. mathematician and astronomer,
Whose murdered body, it was said,
Was buried in the ruins of the old library.

She imagined
Her hands unrolling the scrolls
And putting them back in the racks and pigeonholes.

She imagined
Exploring the codices in their wooden chests.

She imagined
A library whose ambitious it was
“ To collect, if possible,
All the books in the world,”

A library that, some said,
At its height
Had contained 700,000 works.

She imagined the grand days of the Royal Library,
And its destruction in fire in 58 B.C.

She imagined the Daughter Library,
And its destruction in 391 A.D.

She imagined Hypatia’s own studies
In an Alexandria
Torn between pagans and Christians,
In an Alexandria
That had lost its two great libraries.

Did Hypatia long for the Library’s famous collection
Of Egyptian, Jewish, and Buddhist texts
As well as all the Greek ones?

As the Young Librarian found out more,
Through research and dreams,
About the Library,
She became intrigued by its division of all knowledge
Into eight categories:
Oratory
History
Law
Philosophy
Medicine
Lyric Poetry
Tragedy
Miscellany.

She imagined herself asking Hypatia,
“ How did you conceive the division of such knowledge?”

Later, after she had been anointed with ashes,
The Young Librarian would muse:
How could her own library
(the Library of Maps)
House knowledge?

Could she herself be,
Like Aristarchus of Samothrace,
A scholar-astronomer-librarian?

Would Hypatia reappear?

As an old woman
And poet-scholar,
She often thought about Aristarchus of Samothrace and Hypatia,
As she sat solitary,
Night after night,
In the Library of Maps,
Watching the Falling Star.

by Moira Roth
Written 7/19/02