the mirror too is a window

Morning

She opened the shutters. She hung the sheets over the sill.
She saw the day.
A bird looked at her straight in the eyes. "I am alone," she whispered.
"I am alive." She entered the room. The mirror too is a window.
If I jump from it I will fall into my arms.



Yannis Ritsos
translated from the Greek by Nikos Stangos


(courtesy of erin)

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untitled

When sleep is running away from a man, and the man lies on his bed, dumbly stretching out his legs, while nearby a clock ticks on the bed stand and sleep is running away from the clock, then it seems to the man that an immense black window opens wide before him and that his thin little gray human soul is going to fly out through this window and his lifeless body will stay lying on the bed, dumbly stretching out its legs, and the clock will ring its quiet bell: “Yet another man has fallen asleep,” at that moment the immense and utterly black window will swing shut with a bang. 

A man by the last name of Oknov was lying on his bed, dumbly stretching out his legs, trying to fall asleep. But sleep was running away from Oknov. Oknov lay with his eyes open and frightening thoughts knocked inside his increasingly wooden head.     

March 8, 1938

Daniil Kharms
tr. Matvei Yankelevich

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woman at a window

Edgar Degas, 1872

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...

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saint augustine in his study

Vittore Carpaccio, 1502

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dame à la fenêtre

André Beaudin, 1948

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view through the window

Raoul Dufy, 1925

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as if nothing (august 6th)

Writing the date, he knows that he could not

inhabit it, that it is already too late.

Each object disappears into an expectancy

in which he does not see his own.

A pale sun touches the window, 

enhances the geometry of the shadows

Écrivant la date, il sait qu’il ne pourra

l’habiter, qu’il est déjà trop tard.

Chaque objet se perd dans une attente

où il ne voit pas la sienne.

Un pâle soleil touche la vitre,

avive la géométrie des ombres

from Comme si de rien by Jacques Ancet

tr. Michael Tweed

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the window at the end of the corridor

The sky, the landscape, the river:
the image at the end of the corridor.
Left and right in the apartment;
The fire extinguisher. The hum of the elevator.
The time after the offices close. Averted faces,
no word and no tenderness.
Someone will begin it,
and going by his door
and going farther, passed the image,
out of the room, in flight.


Jürgen Becker
tr. Okla Elliott

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paradox

with a window
even closed
especially closed
one always finds
oneself outside

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expressionist window

(go to 3.17)









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light time silence

Keisuke Yamamoto (山本桂右), lithograph

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