Central Library (Musings) - 3 April 2006

You can find
In between Victoria Street
And North Bridge Road
the re-born
Central library

Birthed out of
an architect’s
dream
A nation’s proud
Symbol of
an intellectually
Advanced island

Its sterile and strong
All steel walls and glass
A chain restaurant
Fronts the entrance
Selling cheap, palatable
Asian and western fare

A 24-hr automated
book-bin stands
mutely/ efficiently
In replacement to
Yester-years'
Librarian aunties

Security-protected glass doors
opens to more
modern wonders...
motion-detecting escalators,
electronic check-out trays
to replace the old
human-to-human type
Transactions

The study lounge
is fully wireless
So you can
Go virtual
with a swipe and click
of the mouse

A girl slumbers in a corner
Over a textbook while
Across the floors
Laptop wires snakes
and hooks
to a hundred power-points
On the walls
Like a surreal scene from “The Matrix”
come to life
the machines
Sucking life from the humans
Feeding itself

Outside the lounge
disenchanted students
Pass by the locked
“Imagination Room” and
“Possibility Room”
the irony in the names
lost to many