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

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open the love-window

At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door
and open the love-window.
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.



Rumi


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pensive

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907)
A Girl's Head in front of a Window 1906


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the blue window

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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

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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

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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)

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man and woman

The solitary man by the window
At dusk looks out, stares
At the grey concrete wall that hides
His neighbour’s daily routine. Always,
The sound of someone sweeping
Dry leaves and later, smoke rising

Entering the room. Such a small world
That one’s rubbish can easily be another’s,
He thinks, then pauses as the first few
Notes rise from a stranger’s throat.
Behind the wall she stood, her secret pleasures,
Burning, singing, burning and singing.

Mayo Martin

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winter window

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who are you, little i

who are you, little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window; at the gold


of november sunset

(and feeling: that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)



e.e. cummings

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a man sits and watches the world

From the window a man watches the world. That's how it always begins. Through this interminable waiting. A man sitting, and watching. For years, maybe centuries. Before even the window and the unmoving body. He is like a pure regard that is embodied each time in the singularity of every new gaze. But, at the same time, what he sees does not reach him. It is as if the dawns and dusks, the seasons slow or fast, nature, things and people glide across the glass, abandoning him to his motionless solitude. Then, leaving the fascinating spectacle, his eye returns to the page where his hands occasionally trace a few more uncertain lines. At that moment he seems to perceive a sudden accord: the one between his fragile human span and the absolute instant of the world. Upon raising his eyes anew, rediscovering the lost vision, the feeling of an irreparable distance — of a tiny wound. A feeling of being there and of not being there. Could that be beauty? he asks himself. And writing, this desire to repair, each time, the imperceptible tear? To regather into a loose weave of words these scattered figures of fate and make of them a single tangible moment. Such that covered, erased by the flow of words, the world would end up being reborn, emerging from this very movement that first annulled it and that, now, offers it this vivacity of which it had just appeared to be deprived. Yes, writing would first be that: sitting to see the world rise within the light of language. And, in an almost mute voice — a breath caused by the words and which bears them — never ceasing to celebrate this beauty, repeating like a silent prayer this simple phrase of Beckett's: "I watch time pass and it is so beautiful."

De la fenêtre un homme regarde le monde. C’est toujours comme ça que cela commence. Par cette attente interminable. Un homme assis, et qui regarde. Depuis des années, des siècles peut-être. Avant même la fenêtre et le corps immobile. Il est comme un pur regarder qui chaque fois s’incarnerait dans la singularité de chaque nouveau regard. Mais, en même temps, ce qu’il voit ne l’atteint pas. C’est comme si les aubes et les crépuscules, les saisons lentes ou rapides, la nature les choses et les hommes glissaient sur la vitre, l’abandonnaient à son immobile solitude. Alors, quittant le fascinant spectacle, ses yeux reviennent à la page où ses mains tracent de temps à autre quelques lignes incertaines. A ce moment il lui semble percevoir comme un accord soudain: celui de sa fragile durée humaine et de l’instant absolu du monde. Avec, dès que ses yeux se lèvent à nouveau, retrouvant la vision perdue, le sentiment d’un irrémédiable écart — d’une infime blessure. Un sentiment d’y être et de n’y être pas. Serait-ce cela la beauté? se demande-t-il. Et écrire, ce désir à chaque fois de réparer l’imperceptible accroc? De recueillir dans un léger tissage des paroles ces figures éparses du devenir et les rendre un instant solidaires. De telle sorte que recouvert, effacé par l’afflux de mots, le monde finirait par venir y renaître, surgissant de ce mouvement même qui d’abord l’a annulé et qui, maintenant, lui offre cette vivacité dont jusque là il paraissait privé. Oui, écrire ce serait d’abord cela: s’asseoir pour voir se lever le monde dans le jour du langage. Et, d’une voix presque muette — d’un souffle engendré par les mots et qui les porte —, ne cesser de célébrer cette beauté, répétant comme une prière muette cette phrase si simple de Beckett : “Je regarde passer le temps et c’est si beau.” 
(lire)

Jacques Ancet

(English translation by Michael Tweed)

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at a window

Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.

Carl Sandburg, 1914

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