Penguin Books: A Eulogy Poem by Sally Evans

Penguins, pulp-paper rough-page set books

matched the texture of duffel coat pockets,

cost threepence on streetside stalls, fuelled

the Robbins generation socially mobile

red brick universities welcoming freshers,

Beatle music blaring in bun rooms and writing rooms,

common rooms and bars, sounding in satchels

wherever we carried our three-guinea hardbacks.

Penguins served bravely, the purple Latin,

sky-blue sociology, Psychology

not Today but Fifty Years Ago,

smooth red of politics, old grey Huxleys,

cherry-colourer Cherry-Garrard never on the course.

The brown of the great Greek dramas. Call no man

happy until he is dead, buried and forgotten.

Call not Penguins happy yet. They saw a time

of hope and education, striving more than strife,

opportunity without the clawing back

of non-existent money, but poverty

for a purpose. Students neither

arrogant zombies nor lost souls,

nor best advised to skip degrees, to stir

the dirt and fog of moneymaking

so as to be in with a chance. Of what?

Heritage, the past translated

in stored neat woodpulp shelves,

those block coloured covers, those black adverts,

sanserif headings and old style poster scripts,

disintegrating photo sections, line

diagrams interchangeable between subjects,

The inky names. The thumbed bookmarks.


O Penguins, if I could ever go back in time

I would use you as tardises, your light bright

newness and hopefulness, the mindful glow

of your expectations. You did it,

you hung on for a century, just as alive

and as limited as those who read you.

By solemn necessity I have outlived you,

to be a guardian of your influence and power,

as your small even shapes, your memorials

gravestones of past pernicketiness

and overflowing detail, a dated store,

still line my shelves, till the glue crumbles,

paper falls apart, and all you and I have said

fade with us, our share in worlds gone,

all diminished in this last perspective,

our failing yet satisfactory lifespan.