Ulysses

This is the third time
I've renewed Ulysses.
I said to the lady in the library
Whose badge says Trainee
"It wouldn't be so bad
If only there were quotation marks"
She looked at me blankly.
"You can't tell when he's talking to someone. Or thinking
About what he might say if he did,
Or just thinking.
There are dashes, but
Sometimes two people talking
On the same line have nothing between them"
She gives me a worried smile
Not meeting my eyes:
One of the mental cases
They warned me about.
But she's too polite to quote her thought.

The book is open before me
A hard won centimetre of white on the left side.
I look at the tomato ketchup bottle
Strong red beside the battered dark green
Of the Scrabble Board.
I know its label off by heart.
Not much of a wanderer
This book. Now I've started
I'll finish. If it kills me.
It's not as if Ulysses is boring.
Every word is sharply focused.
Quality and authenticity.
So far as I have got
Is brighter in my mind
Than what's going on around me.
Shake before use.
I'll spend ten minutes
Wandering about his descriptions of sounds.
Does dry sea weed sound like that
When it's walked on?
Perhaps, if you wear boots
Not plimsoles.
57 varieties.
What are all the others? Soups,
I suppose. Sandwhich Spread.
I tried getting something easier,
With a plot: a-b-c.
But it was like a meal
Of tomato sauce.
You knew what was coing next.
07-02
31401220.
The same sweet, sour and salt,
On every page.
Suitable for a glutein free diet
Partially obscured
By a long red dribble.
There's a sensation of light and space,
No added thickener
The sea sky and slow rhythm
Going God knows where.
No artificial Colours or Preservatives.
Eat within eight weeks of opening.
If I finish it at all
I'll have to start all over again
Just to try to work out
What on earth it's about.
Can be depressed.
There is a sticky red rim like sleepy dust
Around the lid.
I've got through six bottles of ketchup
Since I first got this book out.
855g.
Is that with or without the bottle?
I'm thankful, carrying home the shopping
To have only the one book in my bag.
And it stops the glass breaking.
The book's cover is the same blue
As the dawn in Cornwall.
What's lycopene?
First time I left home for a week
Was on a college trip to St Ives;
I thought I was homesick,
Then I realised I hadn't had any tomato sauce
For three days.
Mum missed the Scrabble.
She says playing Scrabble
Increases your powers of concentration.
A week's the longest I've ever been away.

-I am come to pay you another visit.
-My dear Simon, the caretaker answered
in a low voice. I don't want your custom at all.