The Window

The glass in a neighbouring window –
The edges of its sharp rectangle
At moments screened and disclosed
By the restless black silhouettes
Of leaves, branches, in the sway
Of the great intermediate trees –
The glass is a panel of flame – gold,
Red – an intense, brilliant lens caught
In the burnishing of the finishing sun.
To the left, the west, the vacant sky
Is alight – its pure yellow declining
Through coral, pink, violet, orange –
And the window captures it all:
It is as an eye, a mind, might be,
Uniting perception with knowledge,
A partner for an instant in nature,
So dissolved or made whole – where these
Are the same – in the flux of the world.
No moment such as this, no epiphany
Beyond, has means to last: a light
Comes on in the house and the fire
Is vanquished. This too is a turning
Of the globe: seen from the interior,
A blank black outside, the glass now
A mirror to enclosure – inhabitants,
Environment, possessions – a burial
On which the earth piles its darkness.
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Harold Jones is a New Zealander, educated at Cambridge University, where he was awarded an Exhibition to read English. His poetry has been widely published in UK and NZ literary journals. He has been a prize-winner in national UK and NZ poetry competitions, and, as a lyricist, in the UK Songwriting Contest, the largest such event in the world. A selection of his work in AUP New Poets Four (Auckland University Press, 2011), drew the UK review, “this excellent poet, a kind of Ted Hughes crossed with Bukowski,” with a further selection, Curriculum Vitae (Xlibris, 2014), reviewed in NZ as “downright incredible.” His work has won the acclaim of pre-eminent critics and poets: among them, Al Alvarez, “I like the elegance and control, the drive to say something rather than just to cut a fashionable figure," and Ted Hughes, “I hear a real voice, a real movement of mind cutting through resistances.” In the US his poems appear in Merion West and VoegelinView.

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