WINDOW-CLEANER SEES PAINTINGS Poem by Menno Wigman

Cars, laughter, noises: everything's shut out
at seven up. All I can hear's my sponge

and squeaky wheezing from the steel from which
I hang. Sometimes a cloud will speak to me

or I guess what a seagull has to say.
The humans: busy, pale, mute, behind glass.

At eight up art. That girl inside, that laugh,
who's spied on her so much that she, immune

to compliments, thus looks into my face?
When does that sparrow-hawk escape its frame?

I'm hanging like an ice-cold painting here
that no one notices, I toil and wipe,

unveil the view once more - remake month
after month the unfaked clouds again.

Look. Now sunlight creeps into my frame.