Louis
MacNeice
THE WINDOW
Neck of an hour-glass on its side–
Hermitage, equilibrium.
The slightest tilt and a grain would glide
Away from you or towards you;
So without tremolo hold this moment
Where in this window two worlds meet
Or family voices from the room behind you
Or canned music from beyond the garden
Will irrupt, disrupt, delete.
Between this room and the open
air
Flowers in a vase imponderably–
The painter knew who set them there
The knack of closed and open;
With highlights upon bloom and bulge
He hung this bridge
in
timelessness
Preventing traffic hence and hither
And claimed his own authority
To span, to ban, to bless.
The sands of light within, without,
Equated and inviolable,
Allow no footprint and no doubt
Of savagery or trespass
Where art enhancing yet revoking
The random lives on which it drew
Has centred round a daub of ochre,
Has garnered in a square of canvas
Something complete and new.
