Thursday, April 7, 2016

Windows

By Tracy

Windows everywhere. Here is a little poem about windows, specifically Drehkippfenster or tilt-and-turn windows, though the photos show many other kinds. Tilt-and-turn are apparently the most common type of window in Germany











Tilt-and-turn


The windows are uncountable
yet plural. On every outdoor
town-view, they dominate – also
singly, from inside, loom over us.
Hold threads under tension, a frame.
Edgy magic, they might unhinge,
fall inward. We tilt them back to air
the room for want of fan or vent,
releasing vapours, our humours.
Out there, commingled.
They gauge the day, admit
street-sound, anonymous.
No veil, this pane, no projection
of hymen, fantastic intactness;
it was always already open.
Not for turning your back on.
Nor for dreaming you live in
another’s life. Rather for keeping
charge like custodia fenestrārum,
alone in a crowd, turning this blind
eye as I hoist or lower the sail.

                                      (Tracy Ryan)




















The poem is also engaging indirectly with aspects of the window-ideas in poems by Mallarmé and Baudelaire, as well as the (I think) misguided use of the hymen in de Man and Derrida.

I've also developed an interest (or further developed a very old, long-held interest) in the various kinds of dormer windows, some of which you can see in these photos.


























"Custodia fenestrārum" in the poem is making a kind of play on custodia oculorum or custody of the eyes, which is enjoined in monastic (and general religious) life — I use it not because of any empathy with the prudery of those who tout this term nowadays, but because of the sense that when living in a densely populated place (unfamiliar to a rurally-based Australian!), windows are more acutely potential sites of failure to respect privacy — in all directions.



No comments:

Post a Comment