The Window

The Window

By Diane di Prima b. 1934 Diane di Prima
you are my bread
and the hairline
noise
of my bones
you are almost
the sea

you are not stone
or molten sound
I think
you have no hands



this kind of bird flies backward
and this love
breaks on a windowpane
where no light talks

this is not time
for crossing tongues
(the sand here
never shifts)



I think
tomorrow
turned you with his toe
and you will
shine
and shine
unspent and underground

Diane di Prima, “The Window” from Pieces of a Song. Copyright © 1990 by Diane di Prima. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.

Source: Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems (City Lights Books, 1990)

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Poet Diane di Prima b. 1934

POET’S REGION U.S., Western

SCHOOL / PERIOD Beat

Subjects Living, Love, Relationships

Poetic Terms Free Verse, Metaphor

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Biography

Feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima was born in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Swarthmore College for two years before moving to Greenwich Village in Manhattan and becoming a writer in the emerging Beat movement. There, she developed friendships with poets Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara, and Audre Lorde. After joining Timothy Leary’s intentional community in upstate New York, she moved to San Francisco . . .

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Poems by Diane di Prima

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Living, Love, Relationships

POET’S REGION U.S., Western

SCHOOL / PERIOD Beat

Poetic Terms Free Verse, Metaphor

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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

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