The Grieving Window Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The grieving window is open a pace
Blowing consumptive curtains of atomic lace-
The world outside is glowing a cadmium wound,
And the war helicopters are dying like sprayed bees....
The young man has tried to walk to her door,
But he is a foolish coward asleep on the glowing sidewalk:
The landscaping is turning blue,
Choking where it is not burning-
The canopy of leaves sucked outwards,
Like umbrellas overturned and floating in
The swift currents of contaminated skyways:
Little children are crying in store halls underground;
Soon they will change forever,
For they cannot hear their parents’ knocking bones,
And she is still beside her window, a musician unsure of the notes;
If she would only look a little further down
The road of cars like dead cattle, she would see her lover
Sprawled like a toppled windmill,
Collecting no more water from the earth, though
Seemingly in peaceful dreams of her....