The Poetry Corner

The Window

By Conrad Potter Aiken

She looks out in the blue morning and sees a whole wonderful world she looks out in the morning and sees a whole world She leans out of the window and this is what she sees a wet rose singing to the sun with a chorus of red bees She leans out of the window and laughs for the window is high she is in it like a bird on a perch and they scoop the blue sky She and the window scooping the morning as if it were air scooping a green wave of leaves above a stone stair And an urn hung with leaden garlands and girls holding hands in a ring and raindrops on an iron railing shining like a harp string An old man draws with his ferrule in wet sand a map of Spain the marble soldier on his pedestal draws a stiff diagram of pain But the walls around her tremble with the speed of the earth the floor curves to the terrestrial center and behind her the door Opens darkly down to the beginning far down to the first simple cry and the animal waking in water and the opening of the eye She looks out in the blue morning and sees a whole wonderful world she looks out in the morning and sees a whole world.