Boy Breaking Glass Boy Breaking Glass By Gwendolyn Brooks
Whose broken window is a cry of art
(success, that winks aware
as elegance, as a treasonable faith)
is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première.
Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.
Our barbarous and metal little man.
“I shall create! If not a note, a hole.
If not an overture, a desecration.”
Full of pepper and light
and Salt and night and cargoes.
“Don’t go down the plank
if you see there’s no extension.
Each to his grief, each to
his loneliness and fidgety revenge.
Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.”
The only sanity is a cup of tea.
The music is in minors.
Each one other
is having different weather.
“It was you, it was you who threw away my name!
And this is everything I have for me.”
Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,
the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,
runs. A sloppy amalgamation.
A mistake.
A cliff.
A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.
I didn’t read this poem in its entirety until recently. But the line “Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there” has stuck with me since high school when I read it painted on one of the hallway walls. (An English class got to paint the walls–I went to the kind of school that did things like that a lot.) This isn’t necessarily my favorite poem but I enjoy the imagery and certain turns of phrase here. And that is certainly worth sharing.
Miss Print 