28 May 2018 – Window Looking

Windows. For looking in. For looking out. To make things visible. To hide them behind shades. We build windows and then cover them to keep out . . . what? The title of this poem has two meanings. First and most obvious, it speaks of a person finding a window (intentionally or not) and looking through it. Alternatively, one might interpret the title to mean the window looks at someone or something. So goes the nature of windows. Except for the final three lines, this poem can be taken quite literally, although symbolic meaning also abides if one looks intently enough. Yet, we have a singing tortoise and a smiling cat. (Being a dog lover, I would say the tortoise’s voice is more feasible than a cat smiling.) In any case, try looking both ways that this window offers; that is, if one can maintain balance.

Window Looking 

                                                                                                Life, what is it but a dream?

                                                                                    Staring through a window stained with rain

Summer outside the room within

                                                                                    The room I lived in once upon a time

Diamonds and fleur de lys hang tattered

from the peeling paper walls

                                                                                    Spattered rain flecks the glass

                                                                                    Resolute outside the window, and the room

once replete with reminiscences

now void of linens, shelves and dishes

                                                Je suis triste   Je suis content

                                                Such a ripe story I tell myself

                                                Rabbits all the way down the tunnel

                                                                                    Me ghosting darkly at the window pane

                                                                                    Struggling to see through nine, etched squares

                                                A chessboard made of mirrors

What’s inside for inspection?

Fecund rivers of recollections?

                                                                                    No malice intended but just the same

                                                such a riddle – a window

                                                            unremembered memoirs

                                                            stealthy, secret stories

                                                            sly and spectral wrong-way mirrors

Thus comes a red one                                                                          Thus goes a white

Bright glass flares                                                         Dust clings to mirrored squares

                                                If there were no windows

No passing out                                                                                     no pulling in

Rising river-room                                                        a singing tortoise draws in his limbs

Tenacious cornered dust                                              a smiling cat in swirls of peppered sun

                                                The wolf of living outside the window

                                                The shattered lamb within

                                                In between the window

staring out                                           and                              peering in

                                                The glass-looking knows no variation

                                                                                                nothing at all persists

                                                                                                nothing at all exists

                                                only a two-way looking glass

                                    When the fisherman sinks his line at last

                                    The sailor raises his mizzen mast

                                    And recollection fishes swim hard a lee toward the past

Aliciae per speculum transitus

Background

I’ve always been attracted to artistic windows. The one in the poem, as an example, has nine panes, so it must also have a structure for those panes, either wood or glass or some other sturdy material. Well-made windows keep out the elements, and at the same time, let in light. We seem to like decorative windows. The stained glass works of art speak to the beauty of color and light. Sainte Chappelle in Paris contains some of the masterpieces of the art. Windows in homes have gone from merely functional to their own kind of art. French doors (a nod to the line in French in the poem) which are more windows than they are doors. Double hung – casement – bay – transom – slider – and the list goes on. We do like our windows, but why? Perhaps for the same reason that most humans crave light, the reason that we enjoy the lengthening days of summer, and the gladness that window light brings to us through our gift of sight. Each and every window has a story to tell – what is kept out; what is safeguarded within – a well-kept room – an abandoned space. It’s all there for the looking.

Exploration 1: Three aquatic images end the poem. Do the three have anything in common and what do they have to do with window looking?

Exploration 2: “Je suis triste /  Je suis content / Such a ripe story I tell myself” If you translated the French, what is the “ripe story” the poet tells herself? 

Exploration 3:  The placement of the poem’s lines is unorthodox – some justified left, some right, and some centered. Can you take a guess at why the poet might choose to lay out the poem this way?

Exploration 4: Did you catch the allusions to a famous piece of literature?