Social Commentary Poetry 
 
An elegy is a style of poetry that is sad, melancholy, and makes you feel as though something is missing from the subject’s life. Elegies help the reader realize how important what was lost from the subject’s life was to them, and how certain changes have significant effects. I chose to write an elegy because I feel that changes which make you sad enough to write about are things that in at least a small way affect your emotions, and your way of thinking. I had something of this nature to express.  In an apostrophe, the narrator addresses an absent person or inanimate object, in this case, the dirty window. This technique gives the object a certain amount of character. I thought that this made it the best choice, because the work is about a window that offers a different view, like a vision. Visions are abstract things that can change the world in such drastic ways that I thought it was appropriate for this to be the form for the deeper warning about pollution that lies in the futuristic setting of my poem.
Their Baba 

Deep deep asleep and greeting her comfort  
hear the orchestra playing as they meet again  
violins must sing differently for them  
here, critically absent of rhythm, beat, and flow  
   
Fading tamely with  her life but ghostly departing  
every wrinkle took entity while leaving  
solemn emptiness complexly weighing down upon  
dampened gazes that usually caress others  
   
Their cheeks never to tingle so rosy again  
her secret language propped by  the chair  
the foot  stool decays at the garden's edge  
which secrets are now forever untold  
   
Aching to hold her squinting blind grasp  
yearning  for her to utter their pictured name  
companions will lack some care because  
she perfected this waltz, and walks anew  
   
Happily with sorrow she now leaves  
draped disturbingly with beauty, red and yellow  
smiling down allowing  her stubbornness  to depart  
try to frolic as for each other they pray.  

M. Hlusko

The Dirty Window 

I thought I was crazy because I thought you spoke the truth  
they told me that you are only a very dirty window  
and that all those others are clean  
through them I saw sun, blue sky, and green trees  
why did you look Out on gray trees?  
why was there no grass?  
what happened to to the sky so blue that is dark through your glass?  
if you are a dirty window, why don't they clean you?  
here in this white city we never go Outside, we only look...  
they say we don't need to  
that's why...  
they keep us busy  
clean and fed  
and all of our window have lovely views  
Although sometimes it seems that they are   
Repeating Views  
not something continuous  
like surroundings should be  
why do you show such a different picture?  
and why can't they clean you?  
you inspire silly thoughts in me  
like the ones I was having yesterday...  
I was imagining that  
you were the only real window and the rest were programmed TVs and that  
they couldn't clean you  
because  
the photo through your eyes is true  
the air is unbreathable  
and the environment hostile  
poison to humans  
I was contemplating  
how it must have transformed, with smokestacks  
and toxic waste...  
but then I thought  
of our gorgeous city and impeccable cleanliness and  
I thought they must be right  
You Are Only A Dirty Window  

D. Hubert

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Last updated on July 8, 1998
Mary Sauve