A poem from A Month of Sundays.
The figure at the window
Allows the light to come and go,
Describing with curtains a house’s share:
The common cause of tenderness,
The record of living that dissolves to mess,
The lazy courtesies all houses wear
To dress anxiety in homely weeds.
Such duplicity defines our needs:
What’s outside must be kept out there.
But graces gather about the portal
That makes an altar in the wall;
They fix an otherwordly stare
On the broken knowledge the world contains.
At rest, through a serenity of panes,
Our worship is holy and debonair,
A thoughtless caption at the windowsill
Blessing quietly a dwelling’s will,
The savage history of our simplest care:
A bed, a table, some love, a prayer.