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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Written on January 11, 2023

Submitted by on December 27, 2023

Modified by on January 12, 2024

36 sec read
52

John Roper

John lives by the sea where he writes and performs songs and poems. more…

All John Roper poems | John Roper Books

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