Hidden

I propose

turning the key

useless to

conceal from you that

strange things

take place

it used to

ring of its

own accord

chair by

the window and the

door closed

saw the curtain

detach

falling

when I weary of

looking, something is

bound to appear

walking

backwards

she is frightened

by the sound but

cannot describe it

the face

vanishes, the

hands remain

white arms beneath

fearful drapery

looking out, over

the hill

I burn it, it

distills a dark mucus

curtain

wrenched away

a gossamer

veil, as it

seems

resembling, yet

most unlike her

armless

chair, handless

cup

sloping downwards to

the base of the hill

momentary

grasp around

her ankle

an old-fashioned

house

a narrow

lane on a

declivity

Keith Waldrop,  from The House Seen from Nowhere (Litmus Press, 2002)

.

.

my room has two doors

My room has two doors
and one window.
One door is red and the other is gray.
I cannot open the red door;
the gray door does not interest me.
Having no choice,
I shall lock them both
and look out of the window.

Kay Sage

image: My Room Has Two Doors by Kay Sage (1939)

.
.

sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

it's 1962 March 28th

I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird


...


I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue


the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return
Moscow, 19 April 1962

Things I Didn’t Know I Loved 

by

Nazim Hikmet

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/things-i-didnt-know-i-loved

as against the half-light of the window

Time is not, Time is the evil, beloved
Beloved the hours brododaktylos
as against the half-light of the window
with the sea beyond making horizon
le contre-jour the line of the cameo
profile...

…a dream passing over the face in the half-light…
“beauty is difficult” sd/ Mr. Beardsley




Ezra Pound, Canto LXXIV

the great enigma

"The lake is a window into the earth."


Tomas Tranströmer

.

.

Après le pas

in every place
we will cut out
windows
to release
the light
from the walls

Silvia Baron Supervielle

from Après le pas (1997)

translated by Jason Weiss

.

.

l'obscur travaille

I didn't know that the window

opened the world

opened my body to the world

that the window was such

a joy

that my entire body

is the recognition

in which there is no longer any difference

between closed eyes

and open eyes

(je ne savais pas que la fenêtre 

ouvrait le monde
ouvrait mon corps au monde
que la fenêtre était une
telle joie
que tout mon corps
en est la reconnaissance
où il n’y a plus de différence
entre les yeux fermés
et les yeux ouverts)

22 janvier, à Paul Brousse


Henri Meschonnic, L’Obscur travaille, Arfuyen, 2011, pg. 78

.

.

my hand at the window, waving

Lauris Dorothy Edmond



.

up here at the window

The Lecture, by Lauris Edmond

.

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)

.

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

.

.

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

.
.

from inscriptions 1944-1956

Again cool windy days,
grey skies and sidewalks black with rain;
again the solitary walks,
and a quiet room in which to sit and work
and see mankind—
only through a windowpane.


Charles Reznikoff

.
.

la lumière et les cendres

it is there before your gaze

the room empty the day

paused on the window

in your eyes you see what

you never could believe coming

you blink are going to speak

but the words cannot be found

c’est là devant on regarde
la pièce vide le jour
arrêté sur la fenêtre
dans les yeux on voit venir
ce qu’on a jamais pu croire
on bat des cils on va dire
mais comment dire on se tait

Jacques Ancet, from La lumière et les cendres

tr. Michael Tweed

.

.

soprano

When you vanish up the staircase
Of the octaves

I know there is a window
Opening into
A garden
Where the tern, restless
On a plum branch

Prepares to migrate
Down the blue curve

Of that vein
Deep in your neck.

Thomas Johnson. 

Photo: Alfonso Almendros

(post via Paris Review)

.

.

high windows

When I see a couple of kids

And guess he’s fucking her and she’s   

Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,   

I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—   

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

Like an outdated combine harvester,

And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if   

Anyone looked at me, forty years back,   

And thought, That’ll be the life;

No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide   

What you think of the priest. He

And his lot will all go down the long slide   

Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:   

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Philip Larkin

.

.

Old Woman at a Winter Window

From squared-off quarters
through a frosted pane
I stare into the glittering
quartz of the air, marbled
with tiny streamers from
valiant chimneys down the valley.

It is as if we pit ourselves
against congealing it.
We claim these square ceiling and walls
and floor from the immensity
as all that have for us,
meaning, against the encroaching ice,

the ice that somehow 

signals another space, a fearful
glorious amplitude.

Old Woman at a Winter Window 

by Margaret Avison

.

like flies

die menschen gleichen den fliegen
die nicht begreifen
warum sie nicht mit dem kopf
durch das glas der fensterscheibe
in das erlösende licht
gelangen können

Hans Arp

men are like flies

who can't understand

why they can't pass

their heads 

through the windowpane 

in order to bathe in the light 

of salvation

tr. Michael Tweed

.

.

Am Fenster (II)

Zum Fenster sehe ich
hinaus, es ist so schön,
hinaus, es ist nicht viel. 
Es ist ein wenig Schnee,
auf den es regnet jetzt.
Es ist ein schleichend Grün,
das in ein Dunkel schleicht.
Das Dunkel ist die Nacht,
die bald in aller Welt
auf allem Schnee wird sein, 
auf allem Grün wird sein.
Hin schleicht sich freundlich Grün
ins Dunkel, ach wie schön.
Am Fenster sehe ich's.

.
I see at the window,
so nice,
outside, it's not much.
There's a little snow
on which it rains now.
There's a creeping green
that creeps into the darkness.
Darkness is night,
soon it will cover the world,
it will cover the snow,
it will cover the green.
This kind green creeping
into the darkness; oh how nice.
At the window I see it.


Robert Walser
tr. Daniele Pantano

.

the open shutter

Someone pouring light
Out of the window.
The roses of air
Open.
And children
Playing in the street
Look up.
Pigeons nibble
At its sweetness.
Girls are beautiful
And men gentle
In this light.
But before the others say so
Someone shuts
The window again.


Karl Krolow
(translated from the German by Kevin Perryman)

.

.