Storm Windows, poem by Howard Nemerov

STORM WINDOWS
Poem by Howard Nemerov

People are putting up storm windows now, 
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain 
Drove them indoors. So, coming home at noon, 
I saw storm windows lying on the ground, 
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass 
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream 
Away in lines like seaweed on the tide 
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind. 
The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass 
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by, 
Something that I should have liked to say to you, 
Something . . .the dry grass bent under the pane 
Brimful of bouncing water . . . something of 
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes 
This lonely afternoon of memories 
And missed desires, while the wintry rain 
Unspeakable the distance in the mind!) 
Runs on the standing windows and away. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Howard Nemerov (1920-1991) served twice as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress — from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. For The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (1977), he won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize. Nemerov was brother to photographer Diane Arbus and father to art historian Alexander Nemerov, Professor of the History of Art and American Studies at Stanford University. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

Let Me Please Look Into My Window, poem by Gerald Stern

LET ME PLEASE LOOK INTO MY WINDOW
by Gerald Stern

Let me please look into my window on 103rd Street one more time—
without crying, without tearing the satin, without touching
the white face, without straightening the tie or crumpling the flower.

Let me walk up Broadway past Zak’s, past the Melody Fruit Store,
past Stein’s Eyes, past the New Moon Inn, past the Olympia.

Let me leave quietly by Gate 29
and fall asleep as we pull away from the ramp
into the tunnel.

Let me wake up happy, let me know where I am, let me lie still,
as we turn left, as we cross the water, as we leave the light
***
“Let Me Please Look Into My Window” appears in Gerald Stern‘s collection This Time: New and Selected Poems © W.W. Norton & Co., 1998, winner of the National Book Award for poetry. Find the book at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1925,  Gerald Stern studied at the University of Pittsburgh (BA, 1947) and Columbia University (MA., in 1949). His work became widely recognized after the 1977 publication of Lucky Life,  that year’s Lamont Poetry Selection, and of a series of essays on writing poetry in American Poetry Review. He has received many prestigious awards for his writing, including the 1996 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the 1998 National Book Award for This Time: New and Selected Poems, and the 2012 Library of Congress Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Award for Early Collected Poems: 1965-1992. He was Poet Laureate of New Jersey from 2000-2002 and received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2005. Since 2006, Stern has been a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. 

Photo: 103rd St. windows

Washing Windows by Terry Collet

WASHING WINDOWS
by Terry Collet

Your mother used to sit on the window 

Ledge of the tenement building and 

Wash the windows of each of the rooms. 

She’d push back the shutters and just 

Sit there with a bucket of warm water 

And a cloth and wash away. You were 

Always afraid she’d lean too far back 

And fall out and down to the ground 

Several storeys below with a heavy crash 

And break bones or neck or maybe die. 

But she’d just sit there her legs holding 

Onto the wall beneath her and push her 

Right hand holding the damp cloth 

Over the glass while her left hand held 

The metal bucket tight swishing the warm 

Water as she moved back and forth like 

Some lone trapeze artist on the high wire 

Without apparent fear or knowledge of 

Was going on in the street below with the

Passing of the walking dead as Father used 

To say and Mrs Febrile sitting on her window

Ledge with her daughter watching gossiping 

And nosing about who did what to whom 

While all the while you were frightened of 

Your mother slipping out the window waving
Her hands and arms as she fell to her doom.

Through the Window, quote by Anais Nin

“A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.” ANAIS NIN

PHOTO: Window in Anais Nin‘s home in Silverlake, Los Angeles (Eric Lloyd Wright, architect) by Rhonda Nelson

You Are the Window, quote by George Bernard Shaw

“Keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.” GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Photo: “Window washing, New York City” by Eric Hancock, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Through the Window Glass, quote by Neil Gaiman

“He left the drapes open, watched the lights of the cars and of the fast food joints through the window glass, comforted to know there was another world out there, one he could walk to anytime he wanted.”

NEIL GAIMAN, American Gods

Photo: Jeremy Egger, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Looking Out the Window, poem by Denis Johnson

LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW (Excerpt)
by Denis Johnson

Looking out our astounding
clear windows before evening, 
It is almost as if
the world were blue
with some lubricant,
it shines so.

…Read “Looking Out the Window” by Denis Johnson in its entirety at poetryfoundation.org. The poem appears in The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New, Copyright © 1995 by Denis Johnson. Find the book at Amazon.com.

Painting by Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

Let Me Please Look Into My Window, poem by Gerald Stern

LET ME PLEASE LOOK INTO MY WINDOW
by Gerald Stern

Let me please look into my window on 103rd Street one more time—
without crying, without tearing the satin, without touching
the white face, without straightening the tie or crumpling the flower.

Let me walk up Broadway past Zak’s, past the Melody Fruit Store,
past Stein’s Eyes, past the New Moon Inn, past the Olympia.

Let me leave quietly by Gate 29
and fall asleep as we pull away from the ramp
into the tunnel.

Let me wake up happy, let me know where I am, let me lie still,
as we turn left, as we cross the water, as we leave the light

…“Let Me Please Look Into My Window” appears in Gerald Stern‘s collection This Time: New and Selected Poems © W.W. Norton & Co., 1998, winner of the National Book Award for poetry. Find the book at Amazon.com.

Photo: 103rd St. windows

Storm Windows, Poem by Howard Nemerov

STORM WINDOWS

Poem by Howard Nemerov

People are putting up storm windows now, 
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain 
Drove them indoors. So, coming home at noon, 
I saw storm windows lying on the ground, 
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass 
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream 
Away in lines like seaweed on the tide 
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind. 
The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass 
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by, 
Something that I should have liked to say to you, 
Something . . .the dry grass bent under the pane 
Brimful of bouncing water . . . something of 
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes 
This lonely afternoon of memories 
And missed desires, while the wintry rain 
Unspeakable the distance in the mind!) 
Runs on the standing windows and away. 

Looking Out the Window, Poem by Denis Johnson

LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW (Excerpt)

Poem by Denis Johnson

…Looking out our astounding

clear windows before evening.

It is almost as if 

the world were blue

with some lubricant,

it shines so.

Photo: John Divola, permanent collection J. Paul Getty Museum