The Closet Professor

Window Art
By Kwame Dawes

for Kojo

There is the fickle shadow, the dialect
of my body; me standing before myself—
as if the framing of this ordinary mirror,
is the small light of a window,
and see this naked man, no longer shy,
move me with the muscle
of thighs and the flattery of shoulders—
this is a kind of art; perhaps
the only art there is, my body
still able to seduce me to tenderness.

My calculus of pleasure or contentment
is the way my older self,
that brother of mine who faced
the wars, four years ahead,
the blasted sight, the kidneys’
decay, the atrophy of bone in his
spine. To think I found comfort
in the slow calculation. He was
broken long before, and I have survived
another curse. This is as ugly
as all love can be. And, so, I give
thanks for this body walking
towards the trees, away from me
the machine of me, my backside
a revelation.

About the Poem

Some poems don’t ask us to escape into beauty—they ask us to pause and recognize it in ourselves, exactly as we are. Kwame Dawes’s “Window Art” is one of those poems. It begins with something simple: a man standing before a mirror, seeing his own body not with criticism, but with a kind of quiet tenderness. Yet, as the poem unfolds, that moment of self-recognition becomes something deeper. It becomes a meditation on loss, on the memory of a brother who has gone before him, and on the fragile gift of still being here. There is grief in this poem, certainly—but there is also gratitude. It reminds us that to be alive, in a body that still moves and feels, is itself a kind of art.

What struck me most about this poem is how it begins in something so ordinary—a glance in the mirror—and transforms that moment into something almost sacred. Too often, we are our own harshest critics. We look at our bodies and see flaws, age, or what we wish were different. But Dawes invites us to see something else: tenderness.

That tenderness becomes even more meaningful when placed beside loss. The speaker measures his own life against the suffering of his brother, who has already endured illness and death. Survival, then, is not simply a blessing—it is complicated. It carries grief, memory, and even a kind of quiet guilt.

And yet, the poem does not end in sorrow. It ends in gratitude.

There is something profoundly moving in the idea that our bodies—imperfect, aging, and temporary—are still worthy of appreciation. They carry us forward, even as we know they will not last forever. In that awareness, there is both a sobering truth and a strange comfort: we are all walking the same path, just at different moments along the way.

“Window Art” is a meditation on the body, mortality, and mourning. The poem begins with the speaker observing himself in a mirror, which he transforms into a “window”—a powerful image suggesting both reflection and passage. The body becomes a work of art, not because it is perfect, but because it is alive and capable of feeling.

The poem then shifts to the speaker’s brother, who functions as both a real person and a symbolic “older self.” Having suffered illness and death, the brother represents the future that awaits the speaker. This creates a poignant tension: the speaker’s present vitality is measured against his brother’s decline.

Dawes does not romanticize this suffering. The physical details—“kidneys’ decay,” “atrophy of bone”—are stark and unflinching. Love, in this context, is described as “ugly,” not because it is cruel, but because it is inseparable from pain and loss.

In the final lines, the speaker imagines his body moving away from him, “towards the trees,” suggesting both nature and death. Yet even here, there is gratitude. The body, though temporary, remains a source of wonder. The poem ultimately suggests that to live with awareness of mortality is not to despair, but to deepen one’s appreciation for the present.

About the Poet

Kwame Dawes (b. 1962) is a Ghanaian-born poet, novelist, and editor, widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary voices in Caribbean and African diasporic literature. Raised in Jamaica, Dawes’s work often explores themes of identity, migration, spirituality, illness, and memory.

He is the author of numerous collections of poetry and has received many honors for his work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Emmy Award for his multimedia project Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica. Dawes is also a passionate advocate for the arts and has played a significant role in promoting Caribbean literature globally.

Much of his poetry is deeply personal, often drawing on lived experience to explore universal themes such as love, grief, and the human body. In “Window Art,” Dawes reflects on the loss of his brother, offering a meditation that is both intimate and expansive—grounded in mourning, yet reaching toward gratitude.