Through the steamed and marked glass of my bedroom window

My view is defined by the large building across East 7th.

Sharing its dominance with only a small blue bar of sky,

It is a block placed down upon a block            

Of brown-red brick turning fingal white.

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Massive, it is fronted by massive terraces, 

Each terrace of cinderblock, gates and slats,

Each announcing function, awaiting use.

 

On such sure heights Bar Kochba’s archers

Would have looked down with practiced eye, 

Aiming to hit the Roman, miss the Jew.

And the festive Aztecs

Would have ascended the topmost terraces,

To ribbon the structure in a holiday hue.

Galileo might have chosen a lower terrace,

And in a measured discreet move

Dropped his feather, a  move he’d be made to rue.

 

Yet through the steamed and marked glass of my bedroom window

I view only empty horizontal structures.

The cold has come again to the land,

And those who could people the terraces are inside.

 

Understood.

 

But when the green warmth returns,

And the air is both moist and sweet,

And the time has come for study, argument and laughter,

The terraces stand unpeopled,

Save for an occasional clothes-pinning figure.

 

This I have witnessed annually, seven times.

 

Mystery.

                                                                                         -   Jeffrey Eisenmesser, 1983

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