silent studies in deception

Just rediscovered this 1988 volume, by George Szirtes, which I bought in the same year ...

... this is Part 2 of a longer poem within, entitled 'En Route':


The Love of Windows

I love the height of windows-they are bodies
at attention in their black and blue,
are blinding truths or lies, or silent studies
in deception, something seen through
once and then again, they frame us, me and you.

Your eyes are windows too, a blank display.
I cannot make you out: the life you lead
turns on no sudden light to make night day,
is only words too small and faint to read
like something in a contract or a deed.

Light strips down at night to ghosts of itself,
flung across the room like an old jacket,
so thin it has no weight at all, grey as a wolf
and small enough to fit inside your pocket.
Since boys have pockets full of useless stuff
I have been certain there is room enough

for light and ghosts. For both. And there are boys
I see across the pavement whom the wind
seems to carry, and a boy who plays
with his disgust, who's neither mine nor kind. 
A girl will find such hardness, swollenness
offensive as an unbecoming dress,

Yet feel a numbing tenderness towards
these martinets with secret business toward.
She'll try to hurt them into words with words
but find at the kill her own self being gored
by (let us call it) love, romance (or such).
Her words are not enough. Or far too much.

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George Szirtes (1948 - )

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