The Street Window

Whoever leads a solitary life and yet now and then wants to attach himself somewhere; whoever, according to changes in the time of day, the weather, the state of his business, and the like, suddenly wishes to see any arm at all to which he might cling—he will not be able to manage for long without a window looking on to the street. And if he is in the mood of not desiring anything and only goes to his window sill a tired man, with eyes turning from his public to heaven and back again, not wanting to look out and having thrown his head up a little, even then the horses below will draw him down into their train of wagons and tumult, and so at last into the human harmony.

F. Kafka, The Street Window

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)

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a figure and a window

Tadeusz Kantor, A Figure and a Window (People extended by objects. A Man and a Window), 1971

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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

ridelle ave., toronto

Gun Roze

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curtain

The Amalienburg Pavillion, Nymphenburg Palace Munich
Don Freeman

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interior, strandgade 30

Vilhelm Hammershøi

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self-portrait, madrid

Boris Savelev, 2007

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I looked out of the window

“I looked out of the window and saw: a red-haired house painter caught a mouse in his wheelbarrow and killed it with the stroke of a brush, then he tossed it in a puddle. The puddle reflected the dark-blue sky, quick black upsilons (reflections of swallows flying high) and the knees of a squatting child, who was attentively studying the little grey round corpse.”

from Nabokov's letters to Vera


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a corner of the artist's room in Paris

Gwen John
info

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asters by the window

Paul Klee

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