Analysis of While Cleaning Windows
I saw you first through rain-streaked glass
as I cleaned the store window, while below us
winter streets awoke and yawning shopworkers
tumbled off the number twenty-seven tram.
Your clothes and style were a cut above
the bovine girls I coaxed from the herd
at Friday hops, to spread across my cold divan.
By spring, there was a thaw in your fixed gaze,
a pink lipped smile as I rehearsed the eulogy
I wrote to send my mother to the grave.
In summer, I found you broken on the floor
stiff limbs unscrewed, piled by dusty lights
and rolled up cables, while in the glass
the lines of my reflection stared on back.
Scheme | AXAX XXX XXX XXAX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111111 11101101011 101010101 10101010101 110100101 01111101 110111011101 1111010111 011111010100 1111110101 01011110101 11111101 011101001 0111010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 615 |
Words | 121 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 3, 3, 4 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 121 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 29 |
About this poem
A poem about obsessive love, disillusion and grief. A hop is an organised dance.
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"While Cleaning Windows" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/178238/while-cleaning-windows>.
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