green jade chimes by the window

I hung green jade chimes by the window,
with a screen of peacock feathers beneath.
Whenever the wind blows they flutter,
and beguile me with their tinkling sound.
In the nights it penetrates my sleep,
like the sound of distant temple bells.



anonymous, Korean sijo
tr. by Richard Rutt


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untitled, 1960

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

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her breath

rustling branches
the grass swaying silently
her breath on the glass


haiku: Michael Tweed   
photo: Ralph Eugene Meatyard

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i have lost you in the light

photographer unknown
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which poured from every window

J. M. Whistler, "Nocturne in Gray and Gold," 1876




Sometimes she wanted to push herself through the deluge
Of light which poured from every window, pushed away dark
If only for a while, and glint in through the space between all things
So she might pour herself, dilute herself, with the liquid of these other lives.


(Michael T. Stowers kindly offered these lines in reply to the previous post)

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past lighted windows

What with the silence, and the possibility of walking out, at any moment over long wonderfully coloured roads to cliffs with the sea beneath, and coming back past lighted windows to one’s tea and fire and book - and then one has thoughts and a conception of the world and moments like a dragon fly in air - with all this I am kept very lively in my head.

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Clive Bell dated 26 December 1909. 


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shining curtains

photograph: Cerasela

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...

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the window shut...

I put myself inside, and I close the window.
They bring me the lamp and they say good night,
And my peaceful voice says good night.
If only my life were always this:
A day full of sun, or soft with rain,
Or stormy to end the world,
A pleasant evening with groups of passing people
I can watch curiously from my window,
A last friendly look at the quietness of the trees,
And then after, the window shut, the lamp still burning,
Without reading anything, or thinking about anything, or even sleeping,
To feel life running through me like a river along its bed,
And outside a great silence like a god who is sleeping.


Fernando Pessoa/ Alberto Caeiro

sonnet LXV

Matilde, where are you? Down here I noticed,
under my necktie and just above my heart,
a certain pang of grief between the ribs,
you were gone that quickly.

I needed the light of your energy,
I looked around, devouring hope.
I watched the void without you that is like a house,
nothing left but tragic windows.

Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens
to the fall of the ancient leafless rain,
to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned:

so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache. 

Pablo Neruda, Sonnet LXV (via SKEELYS)

image: Todd Hido

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fleeting dawn reveries

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museum window

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