Joyce Carol Oates

I SAW A WOMAN WALKING INTO A PLATE GLASS WINDOW

I saw a woman walking into a plate glass window

as if walking into the sky.

I saw her death striding forward to meet her,
shadowed in flawless glass.

Dogwood blossoms drew her, a lilac-drugged air, 
it was beauty's old façade,
blinding, 
blind: the transparency
that, touch, turns opaque.

The frieze into which she stepped buckled in anger
and dissolved in puzzle parts about her head.

•  •  •

I saw a woman walking into sunshine confident and composed

and tranquil to the last. 

I saw a woman walking into something that had seemed nothing.

As we commonly tell ourselves.

The trick to beauty is its being unassimilable,

a gallery of glittering reflections,

each puzzle part in place.

Not this raining of glass and blood

about the amazed head.

The unfathomable depths into which she stepped became 

the merest surface,

Pain and noise.

•  •  •

I saw a woman walking into her broken body

as if she were a bride.

I saw her soul struck to the ground  because mere space 

could not bear it aloft.

I saw how the window at last framed only what was there,

beyond the frame,
that could not fall.

My throat filled swiftly with blood:

you would not have believed how swiftly.

"THE TIME TRAVELER" Poems - Joyce Carol Oates
 A William Abrahams Book, 1989