Replacing Sash Cords

It's easier to screw than to unscrew;
the heads have generally been painted in,
and the slots need to be chipped open, but
the side strips pop free in a shower of flakes,
revealing the stained unpainted doors, secured
by two rust-whittled nails, to the chambers
where wait the sashweights, somber and inert.

The frayed cord snapped; a sashweight dropped one night
when no one listened. Here it rests, on end,
the simulacrum of a phallus, long,
blunt-ended, heavy, rough, its heaviness
its raison d'etre, so rust and ugliness
don't matter, nor the dreadful loneliness
of being hung for decades in the dark.

The knots, stiffened and dried by time,
still yield to prying fingers. They are not
all alike; there were a number of hands;
most settled for a pair of half-hitches,
but some displayed a jaunty sailor's skill
and love of line, looped back and proudly cinched.
Dead handymen and householders less deft

come forth from these their upright wooden tombs
with a gesture, a swirl of rope before
they let the sashweight drop and, knocking, swing
back to its dark mute duty, its presence
known only in the grateful way a window,
counterbalanced, lightly rises to
admit the hum and eager air of day.

John Hoyer Updike