Museum

Swedish for Common Sense

Each night the mind composes self for sleep,
   flat-packed, tucked and folded into dream.
   Each morning it awakens from the deep
with Allen key, screwdriver and a ream
   of step-by-step assembly ordinals
   that puzzles first, a mystifying scheme
of doctrines pictographed by cardinals
   in camera, IKEA-conclave writ
   that bids the abstract two-dimensionals
rise up to find their third in mitred fit
   of flesh and spirit, joined beneath the sun
   like shelves that hold the books whose contents sit

in minds that wake from pagination’s run
to shapely thought from ancient seed-beds sprung.

from the introduction:
Museums come in many shapes and sizes: museums of art, of science and technology, of natural history, of interior design, of sport, of philately or numismatics, or of whatever else in the universe of things has taken anyone’s notice. The most common notion of a museum will conjure scenes of objects on display, of whatever provenance, extricated from their living implication in space and time to sit still for the contemplation of passers-by. The main business of a museum is precisely that contemplation, which gives the bricks-and-mortar structure its name: it is a place for musing, for reflection and rumination, a place where we allow the artefacts of time to play upon our consciousness retrospectively.