The poem “I Know the Window” is published in Brief Wilderness by Shoe Music Press.
“What is Brief Wilderness?
Other than being another in a series of great small press publications from Shoe Music Press, when asked to explain the title, I’ve said that it suggests the distance between individuals, which is what most literature is about, whether it be a solitary lyric poet talking about how they see the world and others in it, always seemingly at a distance, or longer works of fiction with a set of characters in varying degrees of proximity. Sometimes this brief wilderness is sensual, sometimes practical, but nonetheless this journal seeks to explore this territory.”
-Gordon Purkis, editor
***
I know the window
from which one can see
you,
tall and skinny,
standing
on an empty street,
over a naked world,
a naked night owl
with you hands ready to be,
to typewrite the nature
and me
sitting on a windowsill
ready to jump
down, to you.
I know the window
through which I slip out,
and instead of driving to work,
unnoticed and unaccompanied,
I drown
deep inside your flood,
down your Stravinsky-like
unrhyme,
down your gentle unrythmes —
chi ha vissuto per amore,
per amore si mori —
the ones who live for love,
are killed by love.
I know the window
from which I see
your fingers
hammering a typewriter,
I watch the poems — your wrists —
running over the black rows of keys.
Your massive Rachmaninov’s hand-span
cannot be interpreted,
they write the letters I cannot see from distance,
they shoot the words onto the paper,
they type
as fireworks,
and then as singers
reach the highest notes
in their compass,
you look above
at all the windows of the house,
you stop your eye on me,
sitting on the 4th floor,
I make your hands go rounds
over the keys,
I catch you in an unrhymed
silence,
it feels like the beginning of the world.
Exactly the second
when people don’t know that they are happy.
A moment later
the window goes as misty
as a still November afternoon.
A thousand of birds
carry a single “Do” note
to the utmost fortissimo,
the birds pass rapidly
over your closed eyes and open arms,
the birds catch me
on their wings,
when I jump down
from that magic window
from which one can see
you, tall and skinny,
standing
on an empty street,
over a naked world,
with your hands ready
to catch me and the birds,
to pronounce in unison
a single “Do” note
to the utmost pianissimo.
___
