Self-portrait as Arcimbaldo’s Librarian

by David Capps

Night. I am in bed, and sitting across from me as a kind of self-portrait, Arcimbaldo’s
librarian. God hope it is not a self-portrait of Arcimbaldo, the way this man’s leafy fingers
extend—bookmarks on closer inspection—grasping or resting upon what may be the only
nonmaterial part. Yet it is a book which props up his own shoulders, from which extend
more books that wrap around his torso, emptying out into the sling of papers and stacked
dictionaries that is his arm. Atop the whole ensemble, his head, inkwells plunge into his eyes
and the plumage of so many pens spreads out as his beard, while his coiffure is an open
Bible. Completely open, this whole picture is absolutely correct but for that last fact, hair
that had never been stroked, bookmarks that had never lost their place to another, pages that
had never yellowed. The librarian, the man of certain experience, my plumped-up reflection,
and the strange cloak of a curtain resting against the stacks, as it does against my own bed—I
don't not want this to be a self-portrait of Archimbaldo, not for all the modesty in the world.