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1.28.2012

The Dressing Room with Pink Sofa (Female Nude in Backlight)



Pierre Bonnard, Le Cabinet de toilette au canapé rose (Nu à contre-jour), 1908
"Bright sunlight filtering through translucent curtains illuminates this interior, shines on the pink sofa in the background and shimmers on the body of the nude young woman—Marthe."
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1.25.2012

a thousand peaks




A thousand peaks locked in freezing cloud
Myriad paths without a single traveler
Each day I just sit in meditation
Now and then hearing the snow
softly drift against my window

Ryōkan, tr. Peter Haskel
image: self-portrait by Hakuin




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leaves at R's window





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1.24.2012

and i (being at a window in this midnight)

Take for example this:

if to the colour of midnight
to a more than darkness (which
is myself and Paris and all
things) the bright
rain
occurs deeply,beautifully

and i (being at a window
in this midnight)
for no reason feel
deeply completely conscious of the rain or rather
Somebody who uses roofs and streets skilfully to make a
possible and beautiful sound:

if a (perhaps) clock strikes,in the alive
coolness,very faintly and
finally through altogether delicate gestures of rain

a colour comes,which is morning,O do not wonder that

(just at the edge of day) i surely
make a millionth poem which will not wholly
miss you;or if i certainly create,lady,
one of the thousand selves who are your smile.



Take For Example This
e. e. cummings


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1.18.2012

standing at the window

standing at the window i have to correct myself.
i am inside looking out.
however, what i see outside
is the inside of an empty room.
i lean that way.
the room in which i stand is full.

inside, the weight of my full room keeps my feet.

i reach. i reach.


poem by erin



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1.08.2012

the wind in the curtains tells the future

I open the windows and let the morning in,
The music is Bach, unaccompanied violin.

The sun's up, the same unruly Sunne
unwelcomed by the languorous John Donne

flaccid after too much love or sex.
His pigeons' kin say Yes with all their necks

still not smart enough to say or show
when they mean No.

The sun comes early here and stays late.
Just after nine at night, the night must wait

as Christ Church summons with bells her hundred and one.
That ghostly roll call occupies the sun

while the college clocks bicker toward ten.
Even England is tired of sun by then

and glad to watch the last light ratchet down
all over town.

Atop this house, my two rooms make an aerie,
a teacher's nest, a writer's solitary.
The curtains whip in air both brisk and sunny.
I make the tea and sweeten the day with honey.

Here, messages abound: in the sostenuto
of Merton's bells, the Italian choir on radio.
The wind in the curtains tells the future and more
but in semaphore.
The whole world's a code I have not broken.
Because she cannot speak, she has not spoken
except in tones for which there is no tongue
except I sing the music she might have sung.
Now, at the end of century number twenty,
so many have plenty of nothing, I nothing of plenty.
Midway through my fifty-seventh year
she is not here.


John Stone, 5 am, sleepless in merton street

1.07.2012

metaphysical curtains

It comes about that the drifting of these curtains
Is full of long motions, as the ponderous
Deflections of distance; or as clouds
Inseparable from their afternoons;
Or the changing of light, the dropping
Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude
Of night, at which all motion
Is beyond us, as the firmament,
Up-rising and down-falling, bares
The last largeness, bold to see.


The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician
Wallace Stevens


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1.06.2012

La Belle et La Bête



(if you are impatient the curtains appear at 1'15")


thanks to Jason Lahman for the suggestion. 
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1.05.2012

winter night from my window





and this is what i see through that window, the ugly communist blocks strangely made beautiful by light and haze. the window as a kind of filter, used to alter reality (like the smoke of grass), for those who live off imagination and dream? perhaps.















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1.03.2012

across the pulsating curtains...

The lascivious air of Spring
Overflows the narrow garden
Beyond my open windows.
Across the pulsating curtains
Confused flower shadows flicker.
All alone in the summer house,
Wordless, I stroke a rose jade lute.
Far off in the lingering early
Twilight a cliff falls from a mountain.
The faint wind breathes with a light rain,
Delicate as a falling shadow.
O, pepper plant, you do not need
To bow and beg pardon of me.
I know you cannot hold back the day.



Li Ch’ing Chao, trans. by Rexroth


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