Library Fines

Library Fines

For as avid a reader as I’ve always been
The library’s priceless as my place of sin
In my carefree young days I’d read books by the score
From my corner behind the great library door.

Alas, that my skills at returning those tomes
Weren’t nearly as great as at taking them home
I should have thought then, that I’d realise some day
That there’d be a bank-breaking penance to pay.

O Library, Library, Library Fines,
You’ve etched my poor face with a hundred new lines,
With a sense of nostalgia I recall the times
When I was too young to pay Library Fines.

Some twenty years on I received that dread letter:
“We’ve re-vamped the system and made it much better –
The shiny computers have brought it to view
That you’ve just over three hundred books overdue!”

As if that weren’t enough to make me quite glum,
Those self-same computers had made up the sum:
For overdue books dating back two decades
I now owe that place all I’ve ever been paid.

O Library, Library, Library Fines,
You’ve etched my poor face with a hundred new lines,
With a sense of nostalgia I recall the times
When I was too young to pay Library Fines.

Upstairs I’ve a copy of “Miss Twiggy’s Tree”
Which the plate says I borrowed in 1903
For the “Birdwatcher’s Guide” volumes one through eleven
I owe a grand total of eighty pounds seven!

I’ve both fact and fiction, in verse, plays and prose
And where I’ve secreted them, nobody knows:
For a vintage edition of “Christopher Mouse”
I can pay back my debt if I mortgage the house.

O Library, Library, Library Fines,
You’ve etched my poor face with a hundred new lines,
With a sense of nostalgia I recall the times
When I was too young to pay Library Fines.

The fine for the Bible would pay half my rent,
But it’s now two decades too late to repent.
To keep all those books seemed the right thing to do:
Nobody told me I had to renew!

I’ve stared long and hard at that library bill:
It’s the sort of grand sum for which people would kill,
So I’ll slit both my wrists, and when I am dead
The insurance can pay back the library instead!

O Library, Library, Library Fines,
You’ve etched my poor face with a hundred new lines,
With a sense of nostalgia I recall the times
When I was too young to pay Library Fines