By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"The Window" reduces the view to almost nothing, then turns that emptiness into a reflection on age, bodies, and the damage time does to sight and self.
The repeated "nothing" is not peaceful blankness but a thinning of what can still be seen and held. Downtown, valleys, and other places remain out there, yet the real twist is inward, in the mind that frames them. The last lines are brutal because they measure decline in the most ordinary terms: bellies, eyes, and the body's lost ease.
'The Window' empties the view to almost nothing - 'Through whick one looks / I see nothing,' and 'Nothing either is / what was seen' - so the repeated blankness reads as a thinning of what can still be held, not peace. Downtown, valleys, and 'other places' stay 'out there,' but the real 'twist in the mind' is inward, and the close measures decline in the bluntest bodily terms: thirty five years ago, same age and place, 'their / bellies and their eyes / would be better.'