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Famous Windowpane Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Windowpane poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous windowpane poems. These examples illustrate what a famous windowpane poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Pastan, Linda
...
pretending the tablecloth is a tent,
practicing departures; where a dim
brown bird dazzled by light
has flown into the windowpane
and lies stunned on the pavement--
it was never simple, even for birds,
this business of nests.
The innocent eye sees nothing, Auden says,
repeating what the snake told Eve,
what Eve told Adam, tired of gardens,
wanting the fully lived life.
But passion happens like an accident
I could let the dough spill over the rim
of the bowl, neglecti...Read more of this...



by Agustini, Delmira
...y de lirios!              English    Outside the night, dressed in tragedy, sighsLike an enormous widow fastened to my windowpane.    My room…By a wondrous miracle of light and fireMy room is a grotto of gold and precious gems:With a moss so smooth, so deep its tapestries,And it is vivid and hot, so sweet I believeI am inside a heart…    My bed there in white, is white and vaporousLike a flower of innocence.Like the froth of vice!    This night brings insomnia;There ...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...he irreducible incorruptible good
Risen past birth and death, though he is dead.
Hope, like a face reflected on the windowpane,
Remote and dim, fosters a myth or dream,
And in that dream, I speak, I summon all
Who are our friends somehow and thus I say:

"Bid the jewellers come with monocles,
Exclaiming, Pure! Intrinsic! Final!
Summon the children eating ice cream
To speak the chill thrill of immediacy.
Call for the acrobats who tumble
The ecstasy of the somersault.Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...urther years-
You shall walk with me tomorrow.

I am sister to the rain;
Fey and sudden and unholy,
Petulant at the windowpane,
Quickly lost, remembered slowly.

I have lived with shades, a shade;
I am hung with graveyard flowers.
Let me be tonight arrayed
In the silver of the showers.

Every fragile thing shall rust;
When another April passes
I may be a furry dust,
Sifting through the brittle grasses.

All sweet sins shall be forgot;
Who will live to tell...Read more of this...

by Levertov, Denise
...:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal--then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our des...Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...heads of love 
and breakfast, 
that sacrament, 
lighter, yellower, 
like the yolk of eggs, 
the flies gathering at the windowpane, 
the dog inside whining for good 
and the day commencing, 
not to die, not to die, 
as in the last day breaking, 
a final day digesting itself, 
lighter, lighter, 
the endless colors, 
the same old trees stepping toward me, 
the rock unpacking its crevices, 
breakfast like a dream 
and the whole day to live through, 
steadfast, deep, interior.Read more of this...

by Tessimond, A S J
...unnoticed, the unnoticable man: 
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man who looked through like a windowpane:
The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting
Morning pipe smoke. 
I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:
The man who is patient too long and obeys too much
And wishes too softly and seldom. 

I am the man they call the nation's backbone,
Who am boneless - ...Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...you, my heart is quiet here,
And all my thoughts are cool as rain.
I sit and let the shifting year
Go by before the windowpane,
And reach my hand to yours, my dear . . .
I wonder what it's like in Spain....Read more of this...

by McKay, Claude
...finch sings sweetly to the pool. 
Oh water, water, when the night is done, 
When day steals gray-white through the windowpane, 
Clear silver water when I wake, alone, 
All impotent of parts, of fevered brain; 
Pure water from a forest fountain first, 
To wash me, cleanse me, and to quench my thirst!...Read more of this...

by Brodsky, Joseph
...Everything has its limit, including sorrow.
A windowpane stalls a stare. Nor does a grill abandon
a leaf. One may rattle the keys, gurgle down a swallow.
Loneless cubes a man at random.
A camel sniffs at the rail with a resentful nostril;
a perspective cuts emptiness deep and even. 
And what is space anyway if not the
body's absence at every given
point? That's why Urania's older sis...Read more of this...

by Brodsky, Joseph
...Everything has its limit including sorrow.
A windowpane stalls a stare. Nor does a grill abandon
a leaf. One may rattle the keys gurgle down a swallow.
Loneless cubes a man at random.
A camel sniffs at the rail with a resentful nostril;
a perspective cuts emptiness deep and even.
And what is space anyway if not the
body's absence at every given
point? That's why Urania's olde...Read more of this...

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