Vacant Possession – Janet Frame

December is Janet Frame Month

Vacant Possession – Janet Frame

All day on the phone. All day
desperate for vacant possession,
ringing to find if the furniture has gone
have I move it yet; if not why?

How can I explain
that my dead mother’s best bedroom and fireside suite
have first claim, that their obstinate
will is to remain. Proud beasts they sand.
Nothing will shift them out
but the voice my mother used when she spoke to her
companionable furniture.

Now her voice is gone and the house is sold and I do not know
the command that persuades a well-loved fireside suite
meekly to rise up on its casters and go!



I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Sunday afternoon at two o’clock – Janet Frame

December is Janet Frame Month

Sunday afternoon at two o’clock – Janet Frame

Downstairs a sweeping broom goes knock-knock-knock
in the corners getting rid of last week’s dust.
The weather hasn’t decided to rain or shine.
Downstairs the washing is hung out, brought in, hung out
again on the clothesline.

Having been to church the people are good, quiet,
with sober stops a the end of their cold Dunedin noses,
with polite old-fashioned sentences like Pass the Cruet,
and, later, attentive glorying in each other’s roses.

The wind combs the sea gulls, like dandruff, out of the sky.
They settle, flaked small, on stone shoulder and steeple,
a city coastal infection without remedy.
Their scattered sea-hungry flocks disturb the good people.

Long past is Sunday dinner and its begpardons.
Cars start in the street. The ice-cream shop is open.
The brass band gets ready to play in the Botanical Gardens.
The beach, the pictures, the stock-car racing tracks beckon.

Seizing time from the University clock, the wind
suddenly cannot carry its burden of chiming sound.
The waves ride in, tumultuous, breaking gustily out of tune,
burying
two o’clock on Sunday afternoon.




I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Complaint – Janet Frame

December is Janet Frame Month

Complaint – Janet Frame

The motor mower a giant wasp on the lawn
reminds me that my nerves are torn.

The TV shots through the wall
do but speak of a Western Hell.

The children’s quarrels and cries
tell me where my hate lies.

The traffic changing gear,
the singer without voice or rear,

the loudspeaker from the factory next door,
remind me that I’ve been here before

in a time quiet enough to hear a thought
parting the tangled stalks of words, creep
soft-footed from the dark into the sure trap
of light, serene light, smooth light;

the splinters piercing the once-quiet spot
remind me that thought without quiet has no shape,
that there’s no escape,
that I wish either noise or I were not, were not.


I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

A woman Photographed – Fiona Kidman

A woman Photographed – Fiona Kidman
(Text from ‘Let us now praise famous women’/Andrea Fisher)

As she sleeps the arm head hair
of a woman fall
across the door
of her open-top
car. The image is highly sensuous;
we associate pleasure
with security:
with knowing a Self
however tenuous
or fleeting, and its relation
to the other.

Back and forth she carries us
across the fraught
and endless narratives who
is she, what is she doing?
is it
me, is it her? Her

absent body
is replaced
by the car. Horizontal strokes of light
and shadow

alternate over her arm and onto
the paralleling curves. Through
the extension of softly
lit surfaces it may be though
that face arm and car
become h
her one
continuous
skin.

The Wicked - James Brown

The Wicked - James Brown

It starts at the edge of your teeth
like a small stone caramelised within a black jellybean,
and then it is grinding inside you like a cancer.
How can you write words you can’t even splutter,
that you can barely even think,
your mind an unspeakable furnace,
your tongue forever tripping over the neighbour’s cat?
You can’t find a fucking pen
in the whole fucking house that works
and, when you do, anger leads you nowhere.
But you follow, oh how you follow,
suddenly hearing the voice of that appalling poet
who once told you how he sent his books to schools
with a note saying they had ten days to return them
before his invoice would arrive. ‘It’s often easier,’
he’d confided, ‘for busy librarians to write out a cheque
than to re-package the book and return it.’
You’d wanted to pull his miserable beard out
there and then. You count calmly to ten
then go about resetting the rat poison without
a moment’s consideration for the neighbour’s cat.
You feel a wonderful power ‘surging’ through you.
Clichés feed your strength because
you’ve got a one-way ticket to hell
and you don’t care. Fire rages, clouds scud.
On your bike you weave and spit
a throaty, viral gob over the windscreen
of an SUV that won’t give way.
There is no rest for the wicked in this world.
At night you bully the dishes
into some sort of submission
before reading the kids a super scary story
—though you are the one tormented by nightmares
of terrible things befalling them.
On the news, the pain and hatred between
the Palestinians and the Israelis are exemplary.
From a distance it’s plain how senseless it all is,
and how nobody can win, but you can feel the anger
and frustration seething inside you,
and you know you’d be out there,
telling yourself the old lie about
how it’s because you love your home
and family more than life itself
that you can feel your fist rising
against the armour
in another offensive headline,
your partner wailing at the news,
your children’s indescribable faces
howling into the cycle.



JAMES BROWN lives in Wellington with his partner and two children, where he makes a living as a freelance copy-editor and writer. His three books of poetry – Go Round Power Please, Lemon and Favourite Monsters – are all published by Victoria University Press. A fourth collection, The Year of the Bicycle, is in the pipeline. He is also the author behind the popular non-fiction booklet Instructions for Poetry Readings (Braunias University Press).

About ‘The Wicked’ James writes: ‘I began the poem in 2003 and put it aside due to lack of time before picking it up again during my stint as the 2004 Writer in Residence at Victoria University. I wanted to write an angry poem simply because I think anger is quite a hard thing to express successfully in poetry. There are a lot of poems about things that might make a reader feel angry, but they still tend go about detailing them in quite restrained ways. I wanted “The Wicked” to sound angry. I don’t recall being angry about anything when actually writing it, but it certainly wasn’t hard to find things to feel angry about. The poem contrasts small, domestic annoyances with a much more significant site of anger, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, in order to show that there isn’t necessarily a smooth correlation between cause and response. I tried to imagine how I might respond if I were forced to live as the Palestinians are forced to live or if a member of my family had been killed by the opposing side, and concluded that it would be very hard for me to turn the other cheek. As a cyclist, there are often times when I fear for my life, and mostly the flight reflex kicks in and I go onto the footpath, but sometimes, if the opportunity presents itself, the desire to fight back briefly takes over. Am I an angry young man? I doubt it (for starters, I’m no longer young), but I can be impatient, and unfairness and bullying always raise my hackles.’

To Death - Ian Wedde

To Death - Ian Wedde

Death takes them all, that’s why
We never see it. Death’s never in
The picture. But everything we see, we see
Because death has. Death took the pictures.
Death looked at Chloe whom the poet
Begged not to run to her mother. Chloe
Ran into the oblivious arms of death.
Quintilius lies in the sleep that goes on
Without ever ending, and the music has faded away
That could have restored blood to the veins of the shade
Death saw. Lydia no longer
Wakes up to hear the sound of gravel thrown
Against her shuttered windows in the night.
Death pictured what lay behind the shutters
And Lydia grew old on the journey between
Her chamber and the dark street where death waited.
O passerby, do not refuse a few
Handfuls of sand to cover up the corpse
Of Archytas. It may be you who needs these rites
Some day, when death has viewed you as he did Archytas,
Who counted all the uncountable grains of sand
On the lonely beach. Death pictured my mother
And my father on the Picton foreshore, cheek by cheek
Under Gemini, twin sons unborn, tinkle
Of jazz from the ferryboat. And death looked at their sons.




IAN WEDDE was born in Blenheim in 1946. He spent part of his childhood in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and England before returning to New Zealand at age 15. One of the most admired poets of his generation, he has also written novels, short stories and art criticism. In the mid-1980s he co-edited the ground-breaking anthology Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse with Harvey McQueen. Since 1994, he has been curator of art and visual culture at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The Commonplace Odes (2001) marks his return to poetry after a hiatus of nearly a decade.
Wedde comments: “Death is one of the themes in The Commonplace Odes which winds right through the book and is the main business of the final poem, ‘Carmen Saeculare’. It is there (the theme) in formal ways, as a kind of address — the gravity of the funerary ode, sombre, and respectful of grief; and it is there (the theme of death) as a flipside of anarchic appetite, disrespectful of ordinariness which is not lived as though this life were your last. ‘To Death’ has borrowed a number of personifications of death from the odes of Horace (Chloe, Quintillius, Lydia, Archytas, etc) and has threaded them on an idea carried over from the previous ode (mine not Horace’s) which derives from my own long-dead father’s lifelong habit of taking photographs. Because he took them, he was never in them. We don’t see death, because he takes the pictures. Death pictures something, he frames it up, it’s going to die. So get a life.”
http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/wedde/
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters/bnzp/2001/wedde.html

Desert Fires – Fiona Kidman

Desert Fires – Fiona Kidman

1.
The morning lake was ironed flat
As fresh blue linen, a heron
Was wedged in a willow tree branch.
I turned away from a lover’s kiss,
unwilling to plumb the heart of bliss,
for that’s Pandora’s box,
and I have worn memory like a shroud
too long; as with that chocolate box lake,
I cannot lift the lid,
there are evil sweetmeats
in its depths.

2.
I did not know that the road south
would be so unsafe. Still
both victim and plunderer, seduction
was imminent. The hills lay like breasts,
the valleys opened like thighs, sister Sappho
joined me as I plucked each bush,
wild purple heather, downy toi-toi hair,
my hands bled from the rose bush thorns
yet still I gathered their scarlet hips,
I could feel their shape against my mouth:

3.
I travelled on, the desert grew dark,
a strange cloud blotted out the world,
approaching cars warned me of the peril beyond,
with full-blown headlights at height of day:
then I saw the tongues of fire licking the plain.
Sisters, we consume and are consumed,
every country has its hear of darkness
and every heart its core of fear.
So I passed beyond the fires
and on the home straight run,
I told myself,
it all seems safe enough again.

The womb - Apirana Taylor

The womb - Apirana Taylor

Your fires burnt my forests
leaving only the charred bones
of totara rimu and kahikatea

Your ploughs like the fingernails
of a woman scared my face
It seems I became a domestic giant

But in death
you settlers and farmers
return to me
and I suck on your bodies
as if they they are lollipops

I am the land
the womb of life and death
Ruamoko the unborn God
rumbles within me
and the fires of Ruapehu still live

Sad joke on a marae - Apirana Taylor

Sad joke on a marae - Apirana Taylor

Tehei Mauriora I called
Kupe Paikea Te Kooti
Rewi and Te Rauparaha
I saw them
grim death and wooden ghosts
carved on the meeting house wall

In the only Maori I knew
I called
Tihei Mauriora
Above me the tekoteko raged
He ripped his tongue from his mouth
and threw it at my feet

Then I spoke
My name is Tu the freezing worker
Ngati D.B. is my tribe
The pub is my marae
My fist is my taiaha
Jail is my home

Tihei Mauriora I cried
They understood
the tekoteko and the ghosts
though I said nothing but
Tihei Mauriora
for that's all I knew

Taiaha haka poem - Apirana Taylor

Taiaha haka poem - Apirana Taylor

I am Te-ngau-reka-a-tu
I once danced with killers
who followed the War God
beyond the gates of hell
to kill in the gardens of pleasure

I am the taiaha left among people
who dance and twirl poi
in gaudy halls
of plastic Maoridom

Father give me guts
Evil one why
have you forsaken me

The net – Fleur Adcock

The net – Fleur Adcock

She keeps the memory-game
as a charm against falling in love
and each night she climbs out of the same window
into the same garden with the arch for roses –
no roses, though; and the white snake dead too;
noting but evergreen shrubs, and grass, and water,
and the wire trellis that will trap her in the end.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

December Morning – Fleur Adcock

December Morning – Fleur Adcock

I raise the blind and sit by the window
dry-mouthed, waiting for light.
One needs a modest goal
something safely attainable.
An hour before sunrise
(due at seven fifty-three)
I go out into the cold new morning
for a proper view of that performance;
walk greedily towards the heath
gulping the blanched air
and come in good time to Kenwood.
They have just opened the gates.
There is a kind of world here, too:
on the grass slopes above the lake
in the white early Sunday
I see with something like affection
people I do not know
walking their unlovable dogs.





O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Drought Breaks – Fleur Adcock

The Drought Breaks – Fleur Adcock

The wet gravely sound is rain.
Soil that was bumpy and crumbled
flattens under it, somewhere;
splatters into mud. Spiked grass
grows soft with it and bends like hair.
You lean over me, smiling at last.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Mornings After – Fleur Adcock

Mornings After – Fleur Adcock

The surface dreams are easily remembered:
I wake most often with a comforting sense
of having seen a pleasantly odd film –
nothing too outlandish or too intense;

of having, perhaps, befriended animals,
made love, swum the Channel, flown in the air
without wings, visited Tibet or Chile:
simple childish stuff. Or else the rare

recurrent horror makes its call upon me:
I dream one of my sons is lost or dead,
or that I am trapped in a tunnel underground;
but my scream is enough to recall me to my bed.

Sometimes, indeed, I congratulate myself
on the nice precision of my observation:
on having seen so vividly a certain
colour; having felt the sharp sensation

of cold water on my hands; the exact taste
of wine or peppermints. I take a pride
in finding all my senses operative
even in sleep. So, with nothing to hide,

I amble through my latest entertainment
again, in the bath or going to work,
idly amused at what the night has offered;
unless this is a day when a sick jerk

recalls to me in a sudden vision:
I see myself inspecting the vast slit
of a sagging whore; making love with a hunchbacked
hermaphrodite; eating worms or shit;

or rapt upon necrophily or incest.
And whatever loathsome images I see
are just as vivid as the pleasant others.
I flush and shudder: my God, was that me?

Did I invent so ludicrously revolting
a scene? And if so, how could I forger
until this instant? And why now remember?
Furthermore (and more disturbing yet)

are all my other forgotten dreams like these?
Do I, for hours of my innocent nights,
wallow content and charmed through verminous muck
rollick in the embraces of such frights?

And are the comic or harmless fantasies
I wake with merely a deceiving guard,
as one might put a Hans Andersen cover
on a volume of the writings of De Sade?

Enough, enough. Bring back those easy pictures,
Tibet or antelopes, a seemly lover,
or even the black tunnel. For the rest,
I do not care to know. Replace the cover.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Afterwards – Fleur Adcock

Afterwards – Fleur Adcock

We weave haunted circles about each other,
advance and retreat in turn, like witchdoctors
before a fetish. Yes, you are right to fear
me know, and I you. But love, this ritual
will exhaust us. Come closer. Listen. Be brave.
I am going to talk to you quietly
as sometimes, in the long past (you remember?),
we made love. Let us be intent, and still. Still.
There are ways of approaching it. This is one:
this gentle talk, with no pause for suspicion,
no hesitation, because you do not know
the thing is upon you, until it has come –
now , and you did not even hear it.
Silence
is what I am trying to achieve for us.
A nothingness, a non-relatedness, this
unknowing into which we are sliding now
together: this will have to be our kingdom.

Rain is falling. Listen to the gentle rain.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A surprise in the peninsular – Fleur Adcock

A surprise in the peninsular – Fleur Adcock

When I cam in that night I found
the skin of a dog stretched flat
and nailed upon my wall between the
two windows. It seemed freshly killed –
there was blood at the edges. Not
my dog: I have never owned one,
I rather dislike them. (Perhaps
whoever did it knew that.) It
was a light brown dog, with smooth hair;
no head, but the tail still remained.
On the flat surface of the pelt
was branded the outline of the
peninsula, singed in thick black
strokes into the fur: a coarse map.
The position of the town was
marked by a bullet-hole; it went
right through the wall. I placed my eye
to it, and could see the dark trees
outside the house, flecked with moonlight.
I locked the door then, and sat up
all night, drinking small cups of the
bitter local coffee. A dog
would have been useful, I thought, for
protection. But perhaps the one
I had been given performed that
function; for no one came that night,
nor for three more. On the fourth day
it was time to leave. The dog-skin
still hung on the wall, stiff and dry
by now, the flies and the smell gone.
Could it, I wondered, have been meant
not as a warning, but a gift?
And, scarcely shuddering, I drew out
the nails out and took it with me.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Composition for Words and Paint – Fleur Adcock

Composition for Words and Paint – Fleur Adcock

This darkness has a quality
That poses us in shapes and textures,
One plane behind another,
Flatness in depth.

Your face; a fur of hair; a striped
Curtains behind, and to one side cushions;
Nothing recedes, all lies extended.
I sink upon your image.

I see a soft metallic glint,
A tinsel weave behind the canvas,
Aluminum and bronze beneath the ochre.
There is more in this than we know.

I can imagine drawn around you
A white line, in delicate brush-strokes:
Emphasis; but you do not need it.
You have completeness.

I am not measuring your gestures;
(I have seen you measure those of others,
Know a mind by a hand’s trajectory,
The curve of a lip.)

But you move, and I move towards you,
Draw back you head, and I advance.
I am fixed to the focus of your eyes.
I share your orbit.

Now I discover things about you:
Your thin wrists, a tooth missing;
And how I melt and burn before you.
I have known you always.

The greyness from the long windows
Reduces visual depth; but tactile
Reality defines half-darkness.
My hands prove you solid.

You draw me down upon your body,
Hard arms behind my head.
Darkness and soft colours blur.
We have swallowed the light.

Now I dissolve you in my mouth,
Catch in the corners of my throat
The sly taste of your love, sliding
Into me, singing.

Just as the birds have started singing.
Let them come flying through the windows
With chains of opals around their necks.
We are expecting them.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

For Andrew – Fleur Adcock

For Andrew – Fleur Adcock

‘Will I die?’ you ask. And so I enter on
The dutiful exposition of that which you
Would rather not know, and I rather not tell you.
To soften my ‘Yes’ I offer compensations –
Age and fulfillment (‘It’s so far away;
You will have children and grandchildren by then’)
And indifference (‘By then you will not care’).
No need: you cannot believe me, convinced
That if you always eat plenty of vegetables,
And are careful crossing the street, you will live for ever.
And so we close the subject, with much unsaid –
This, for instance: Though you and I may die
Tomorrow or next year, and nothing remain
Of our stock, of the unique, preciously-hoarded
Inimitable genes we carry in us,
It is possible that for many generations
There will exist, sprung from whatever seeds,
Children straight-limbed, with clear inquiring voices,
Bright-eyed as you. Or so I like to think:
Sharing in this your childish optimism.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Unexpected Visit - Fleur Adcock

Unexpected Visit - Fleur Adcock

I have nothing to say about this garden.
I do not want to be here, I can’t explain
What happened. I merely opened a usual door
And found this. The rain

Has just stopped, and the gravel paths are trickling
With water. Stone lions, on each side,
Gleam like wet seals, and the green birds
Are stiff with dripping pride.

Not my kind of country. The gracious vistas,
The rose-gardens and terraces, are all wrong –
As comfortless as the weather. But here I am.
I cannot tell how long

I have stood gazing at grass too wet to sit on,
Under a sky so dull I cannot read
The sundial, staring across the curving walks
And wondering there they lead;

Not really hoping, though, to be enlightened.
It must be morning, I think, but there is no
Horizon behind the trees, no sun as clock
Or compass. I shall go

And find somewhere among the formal hedges
Or hidden behind a trellis, a toolshed. There
I can sit on a box and wait. Whatever happens
May happen anywhere,

And better, perhaps, among the rakes and flowerpots
And sacks of bulbs than under this pallid sky:
Having chosen nothing else, I can at least
Choose to be warm and dry.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Incident – Fleur Adcock

Incident – Fleur Adcock

When you were lying on the white sand,
A rock under your head, and smiling,
(Circled by dead shells), I came to you
And you said, reaching to take my hand,
‘Lie down.’ So for a time we lay
Warm on the sand, talking and smoking,
Easy; while the grovelling sea behind
Sucked at the rocks and measured the day.
Lightly I fell asleep then, and fell
Into a cavernous dream of falling.
It was all the cave-myths, it was all
The myths of tunnel or tower or well –
Alice’s rabbit-hole into the ground,
Or the path of Orpheus: a spiral suitcase
To hell, furnished with danger and doubt.
Stumbling, I suddenly woke; and found
Water about me. My hair was wet,
And you were sitting on the grey sand,
Waiting for the lapping tide to take me:
Watching, and lighting a cigarette.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Before Sleep – Fleur Adcock

Before Sleep – Fleur Adcock

Lying close to your heart-beat, my lips
Touching the pulse in your neck, my head on your arm,
I listen to your hidden blood as it slips
With a small furry sound along the warm
Veins; and my slowly-flowering dream
Of Chinese landscapes, river-banks and flying
Splits into sudden shapes – children who scream
By a roadside, blinded men, a woman lying
In a bed filled with blood: the broken ones.
We are so vulnerable. I curl towards
That intricate machine of nerves and bones
With it’s built-in life: your body. And to your words
I whisper ‘Yes’ and ‘Always’, as I lie
Waiting for thunder from a stony sky.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Note on Propertius 1.5 – Fleur Adcock

Note on Propertius 1.5 – Fleur Adcock

Among the Roman love-poets, possession
Is a rare theme. The locked and flower-hung door
The shivering lover, are allowed. To more
Buoyant moods, the canons of expression
Gave grudging sanction. Do we, then assume,
Find Propertius tear-sodden and jealous,
That Cynthia was inexorable callous?
Plenty of moonlight entered that high room
Whose doors had met his Alexandrine battles;
And she, so gay a lutanist, was known
To stitch and doze a night away, alone,
Until the poet tumbled in with apples
For penitence and for her head his wreath,
Brought from a party, of wine-scented roses –
(The garland’s aptness lying, one supposes,
Less in the flowers than in the thorns beneath:
Her waking could, he knew, provide his verses
With less idyllic themes.) On to her bed
He rolled the round fruit, and adorned her head;
Then gently roused her sleeping mouth to curses.
Here the conventions reassert their power:
The apples fall and bruise, the roses wither,
Touched by a swallowed moon. But there were other
Luminous nights – (even the cactus flower
Glows briefly golden, fed by spiny flesh) –
And once, as he acknowledged, all was singing:
The moonlight musical, the darkness clinging,
And she compliant to his every wish.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

For a Five-year-old – Fleur Adcock

For a Five-year-old – Fleur Adcock

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
Into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
That it would be unkind to leave it there:
It might crawl to the floor; we must take care
That no one squashes it. You understand,
And carry it outside, with a careful hand,
To eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
Your gentleness is moulded still by words
From me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
From me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
Your closest relatives, who purveyed
The harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Wife to Husband - Fleur Adcock

Wife to Husband - Fleur Adcock

From anger into the pit of sleep
You go with a sudden skid. On me
Stillness falls gradually, a soft
Snowfall, a light cover to keep
Numb for a time the twitching nerves.

Your head on the pillow is turned away;
My face is hidden. But under snow
Shoots uncurl, the green thread curves
Instinctively upwards. Do not doubt
That sense of purpose in mindless flesh:
Between our bodies a warmth grows;
Under the blankets hands move out,
Your back touches my breast, our thighs
Turn to find their accustomed place.

Your mouth is moving over my face:
Do we dare, now, to open our eyes?




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

An open door – Kevin Ireland

An open door – Kevin Ireland

we forgot to close the kitchen door
a sycamore propels itself inside

spiders dangle from a shelf
a mould begins to mat across the floor

insets moths pour through a shaft
of glossy specks of dust and seed

tangled ferns and trees thrust up
the ceiling bursts the walls unseam and fall

our curtains deck out burrows nooks and nests
daddy-long-legs tinker with our radio

a minah-bird collects your lockets and bangles
a weasel sticks its nose into my books

our Woolworth’s clock that never used to go
beats like a gong beneath a mossy heap of bricks.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Auto-Da-Fe – Kevin Ireland

Auto-Da-Fe – Kevin Ireland

yesterday you burnt your olden times:
proposals snapshots invitations declarations

your years of real and fake and flash affection
gusted into blushing flame

your lovers’ hands across your shoulders
baked and blistered cracked then peeled away

your grinning moments at the horn mad beach
fanned hot crackles then twisted into ash

yesterday you gave cruel riddance to the lot
and sent your past loves to the stake

but though I am impressed by ways or codes
so drawn to irreversible convictions

yet I am of that self-same faith which brought
these luckless men to their ordeal by fire

thus should I fear for our remembrance:
confess new fuel to a later blaze?




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A guide to perfection – Kevin Ireland

A guide to perfection – Kevin Ireland

you complain of your body
and make out a detailed list
of what you call your worst deformities

you start at your toes and proceed
to ankles and knees bottom stomach
breast lungs jaw eyes hair skin

I reply that this is vanity:
you must have been inspecting yourself
too closely and with too much interest

low self-esteem is not aware
of how to turn this way and that
to show ill-favours quite so prettily

you wont agree: for far too long
you have denied your glamour: you won’t
undress your eyes – and so I threaten

to hold you in the circus mirror of my mind
and by distortion warp you straight and show
how neatly blankly coldly perfect you could be




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Caroline beside the sundial – Kevin Ireland

Caroline beside the sundial – Kevin Ireland

for a fraction
everything was stilled

camera-lens and water-lily

a droplet hanging from a leaf
undropped

the gnomon
idled in the sun

thistledown bristled

you said the dial
said one

for five-hundredths of a second
the shutter gaped

ripples pitched the lily-pond

droplets plopped
thistledown swarmed off

in that tripped moment
daylight blinked

time lay in a tray of fixative

Caroline and Eternity
Are linked




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A popular romance – Kevin Ireland

A popular romance – Kevin Ireland

will you have me?
groaned the frog
my squashy love
is all agog

do you care?
complained the crab
a true heart serves
this horny scab

the prince exclaimed
if you agree
your love could change
the brute in me

they’re all the same
the princess said
it’s like a bestiary
in my bed




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Educating the body – Kevin Ireland

Educating the body – Kevin Ireland

when she asked
her sudden: why?
she tricked no answer
from my eye

when she tried
to make me slip
she forced no stammer
from my lip

she tried to joke
to sting to trip
her efforts could not
shake my grip

what should she do
with one so sly?
even my body
learns to lie




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A hidden message – Kevin Ireland

A hidden message – Kevin Ireland

her kiss on the mirror
was crushed and mute:
why couldn’t she simply
leave a note?

I rubbed at her lipstick
and met my eye:
and got the message
hidden away




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Striking a pose – Kevin Ireland

Striking a pose – Kevin Ireland

we’ll stock up books
and wine and pie
then stop the clocks
and never die

we’ll nail the windows
brick up the door
and live on a mattress
on the floor

if death still comes
we’ll strike a pose
and hold our breath
until he goes




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Deposition – Kevin Ireland

Deposition – Kevin Ireland

I cannot
give you words
which turned
as succulent as flesh
upon the nib:

thin men
write gaunt poems
and each word
sticks out
like a rib




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Parade: Liberation Day – Kevin Ireland

Parade: Liberation Day – Kevin Ireland

Think of a tree-lined city street
on an early autumn day;
fashion placards and bunting;
imagine a display
of dripping clothes
drying among the flags and signs
hung from the balconies;
think flags on to washing-lines.

People this street;
create language and breed.
Then think of, say, twenty tanks,
cornering at a terrifying speed,
powdering the paving-bricks;
imagine parachutes, drifting like thistle seed
through the gusts of autumn leaves and sticks.

Nor picture the infantry,
young, strong,
measuring with hobnails
their heroic song.
Yet make this song trail form the distance,
though the soldiers are near:
the rhytjm is significant,
the words need not be clear.

Think of a happy street
on an early autumn night;
imagine tables and chairs beneath the trees,
and the gay light
of colored globes,
swaying with flag and sign.

People this street;
create chatter and wine.
Then think of, say, a billion stars,
and a moon darting at a terrifying speed
from darkness, to darkness again.
Erase it all
with sudden drenching rain.

Now picture the infantry,
cold, damp,
measuring with hobnails
the way back to camp.
Yet make their tread trail from the distance,
though they are near:
gently imagine them,
their future is not clear.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A Natural Grace – C. K. Stead

A Natural Grace – C. K. Stead

Under my eaves untiring all the spring day
Two sparrows have worked with stalks the mowers leave
While I have sat regretting your going away.
All day they’ve ferried straw and sticks to weave
A wall against the changing moods of air,
And may have worked into that old design
A thread of cloth you wore, a strand of hair,
Since all who make are passionate for line,
Proportion, strength, and take what’s near, and serves.
All day I’ve sat remembering you face,
And watched the sallow stalks, woven in curves
By a blind process, achieve a natural grace.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, III – C. K. Stead

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, III – C. K. Stead

The prim lips, homing, round the wind,
Condensing news along the Strand.
Nerveless, the words assault, descent –
Stiff jaws convey them underground.

The verb that rackets through the mind
Transports the body far beyond
Expected stops.
Swirled on the wind
The lost, chaotic flakes ascend.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, II: Out ant de barber est tremblant sur tant d’ombres – C. K. Stead

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, II: Out ant de barber est tremblant sur tant d’ombres – C. K. Stead

On steps of the British Museum the snow falls,
The snow falls on Bloomsbury, on Soho, on all
Cradled in the great cup of London.
On all the lions and literary men of London
Heaping in gutters, running away in drains
The falling snow, the city falling.

Snow behind iron railings, drifts, collects,
Collects like coins in the corners of Nelson’s hat
(Newbolt from a window in the Admirality shouting
‘Umbrellas for Nelson’ and waving a sheaf of odes)
And down the long avenue

There through her aquid glass
Circumambient Regina, turning slowly form the pane,
Is seen imperiously to mouth ‘Alber, my dear,
How do we pronounce Waitangi?’
And snow descend.

There I met my grandfather, young and bearded,
With thick Scandanavian accent, who asked me
Directions to the dock; and later departed,
Bearing me with him in his northern potency
South.
South. Earth’s nether side in night
Yet hardly dark, and I under the day
That’s scarcely light.
Flakes descending, dissolving
On the folds of a cape
on a single blue ear-ring,
On a bowlder beneath the great trees of Russell Square.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, I: Bimmorie, O Binnorie – C. K. Stead

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, I: Bimmorie, O Binnorie – C. K. Stead

In Ladbroke Square the light on waxen branches –
The orange light through two veined leaves
Tenacious in frost.
Upstairs, she lit the gas,
And drew bright curtains on the whitened eaves,
And said (her hand above the slowly turning disc)
‘I shall never go back’.
Mozart in the delicate air
Slid from her glass, beat vainly against the cushions,
Then took off gladly across the deserted Square.
‘You too must stay’ (loosening her sun-bleached hair)
‘You more than I – you will defeat their fashions’.

Invisible fins guided her to my chair.

Pictures in a gallery undersea
Were turned facing the wall, and the corridors were endless;
But in the marine distance, floating always beyond me,
A girl played Mozart on her sun-bleached hair.

So that wherever I walked on that long haul, midnight to dawn,
Stones of a sunken city woke, and passed the word,
And slept behind me; but the notes were gone,
Vanished like bubbles up through the watery air
Of London, nor would again be heard.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Carpe Diem – C. K. Stead

Carpe Diem – C. K. Stead

Since Juliet’s on ice, and Joan
Staked her chips on a high throne –

Sing a waste of dreams that are
Caressing, moist, familiar:

A thousand maidens offering
Their heads to have a poet sing;

Hard-drinking beaches laced with sun,
The torn wave where torn ships run

To wine and whitewashed bungalows.
This summer sing what winter knows:

Love keeps a cuckoo in its clock,
And death’s hammer makes the stroke.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The precious pearl – Pat Wilson

The precious pearl – Pat Wilson

The oyster shuts his gates to form the pearl.
He knows he has a saviour caught within him,
Poor fool, old oyster. And it works against him,
An irritant that’s locked within his shell,
A single-mindedness that thins his hear,
Turns it to narrowheartedness. Yet he,
Poor fool, poor oyster, used to love the sea
In all its many forms, to every part
Open with tranquil, unassuming jaws.
Then that foul irritant was driven in,
And snap! the wounded tongue cherished its sin
Until at last by hard, immobile laws
A shining, perfect pebble made from wrong –
A perfect grievance – rolled from off the tongue.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Tree – Pat Wilson

The Tree – Pat Wilson

The day the big tree went
There came two rather seedy-looking men
Full of mysteries of their craft.
They spoke loudly yet confidentially to each other,
Nodded to me and my brother,
Said good morning to my brother’s wife,
Cleared away all the little children of the neighbourhood,
And addressed themselves
To their big, supple saw.

Two or three hours later under the tree
They were still only half-way through.
The cut had a tell-tale concave scoop
Where each had been pulling down at the end of his stroke.
There was much previous talk of wedges,
Much arranging of ropes,
Calculation of angles,
And my brother and I were taking turns at the saw.

And so we all got friendly there with each other,
Putting the mysteries away
Under the great macrocarpa tree.
And when it started to lift and heave
And when the earth shook and the great sigh went up
As it fell and settled,
Then all the birds came flying out in a cloud
And all the children flew in with shouts an cries
And started a battle with the cones
And made their huts and houses in the fir.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Curvier Light – Pat Wilson

Curvier Light – Pat Wilson

Perennial fluctuation,
Interior lift of the sea,
Mist or a light rain, and silence –

Suppose our breathing is this movement
This mist, our wishes coming back to us,
The rain, some forgiveness of our rashness,
The night, all that is against us –

Land all along one side,
One lamp turned low in the cabin
Two lights to sea and then great Curvier,

Admirable light!
Swinging, like a discus
On the arm of its taut brilliant beam,
The whole massed weight of the night!




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Farewell – Pat Wilson

The Farewell – Pat Wilson

And so, one day when the tide was away out,
The gulls there dancing along the edge of the sea,
We walked across the sand, down to the boat
And began again – she to protest and appeal
I to refuse, looking aside, and then turning
And smiling…
For was it not as if I had
Whatever it was that she asked, but who could persuade her
Of that? nor was it true that I could pretend
For ever…
and all the gulls there, crying and playing,
Hunting, and all the reds and browns and yellows
Of late afternoon, and the last tints of the blue
Going out with the tide, and the boat drawn up there fast
Becoming high and dry on the sand as we talked.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Anchorage – Pat Wilson

The Anchorage – Pat Wilson

Fifteen or twenty feet below,
The little fish come creeping round the anchor chain.
I could not have it quieter now,
Not anywhere, nor could there be less movement
Anywhere at all than here.

The bay moves into night.
The shadows come to watch and wait in every hollow
Till they have gathered-in all.
But moon comes over the rocks; she lights the little fall
And rise and fall at the beach.

Deep water, deep bay
So still and calm for one whole night in the south-east
That day has never come,
And I am still upon my knees out on the stern,
And you and I still watch
Down twenty, thirty feet below.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

At the Fox Glacier Hotel – James K. Baxter

At the Fox Glacier Hotel – James K. Baxter

One kind of love, a Tourist Bureau print
Of the Alps reflected in Lake Matheson

(Turned upside down it would look the same)
Smiles in the dining room, a lovely mirror

For any middle-aged Narcissus to drown in –
I’m peculiar; I don’t want to fall upwards

Into the sky! Now, as the red-eyed tough
West Coast beer-drinkers climb into their trucks

And roar off between colonnades
Of mossed rimu, I sit for a while in the lounge

In front of a fire of end planks
And wait for bedtime with my wife and son,

Thinking about the huge ice torrent moving
Over bluffs and bowls of rock (some other

Kind of love) at the top of the valley –
How it might crack our public looking-glass

If it came down to us, jumping
A century in twenty minutes,

So that we saw, out of the same window
Upstairs where my underpants are hanging to dry,

Suddenly – no, not ourselves
Reflected, or a yellow petrol hoarding,

But the other love, yearning over our roofs
Black pinnacles and fangs of toppling ice.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Summer 1967 – James K. Baxter

Summer 1967 – James K. Baxter

Summer brings out the girls in their green dresses
Whom the foolish might compare to daffodils,
Not seeing how a dead grandmother in each one governs her limbs,
Darkening the bright corolla, using her lips to speak through,
Or that a silver torque was woven out of
The roots of wet spear grass.
The young are mastered by the Dead,

Lacking cunning. But on the beaches, under the clean wind
That blows this way from the mountains of Peru,
Drunk with the wind and the silence, not moving an inch
As the surf-swimmers mounted yoked waves,
One can begin to shake with laughter,
Becoming oneself a metal Neptune.
To want nothing is


The only possible freedom. But I prefer to think of
An afternoon spent drinking rum and cloves
In a little bar, just after the rain had started, in another time
Before we began to die – the taste of boredom on the tongue
Easily dissolving, and the lights coming on –
With what company? I forget
Where can we find the right

Herbs, drinks, bandages to cover
These lifelong intolerable wounds?
Herbs of oblivion, they lost their power to help us
The day that Aphrodite touched her mouth to ours.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Lion Skin – James K. Baxter

The Lion Skin – James K. Baxter

The old man with a yellow flower on his coat
Came to my office, climbing the twenty-eight steps,
With a strong smell of death about his person
From the caves of the underworld.
The receptionist was troubled by his breath
Understandably.

Not every morning tea break
Does Baron Saturday visit his parishioners
Walking stiffly, strutting almost,
With a cigar in his teeth – she might have remembered
Lying awake as if nailed by a spear
Two nights ago, with the void of her life
Glassed in a dark window – but suitable enough
She preferred to forget it.

I welcomed him
And poured him a glass of cherry brandy,
Talked with him for half an hour or so,
Having need of his strength, the skin of a dead lion,
In the town whose ladders are made of coffin wood.

The flower on his coat blazed like a dark sun.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

At Taieri Mouth – James K. Baxter

At Taieri Mouth – James K. Baxter

Flax-pods unload their pollen
Above the steel-bright cauldron

Of Taieri, the old water-dragon
Sliding out from a stone gullet

Below the Maori-ground. Scrub horses
Come down at night to smash the fences

Of the whaler’s children. Trypots have rusted
Leaving the oil of anger in the blood

Of those who live in two-roomed houses
Mending nets or watching from a window

The great south sky fill up with curdled snow.
Their cows eat kelp along the beaches.

The purple sailor drowned in thigh boots
Drifting where the currents go

Cannot see the flame some girl has lighted
In a glass chimney, but in five days’ time

With bladder-weed around his throat
Will ride the drunken breakers in




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The beach house – James K. Baxter

The beach house – James K. Baxter

The wind outside this beach house
Shaking the veranda rail
Has the light of the sky behind its blows,
A violence stronger than the fable

Of life and art. Sitting alone
Late at the plywood table,
I have become a salt-scoured bone
Tumbling in the drifted rubble,

And you, my love, sleep under quilts within
The square bunk-room. When I was young
(Hot words and brandy on my tongue)
Only the grip of breast, mouth, loin,

Could ward off the incubus
Of night’s rage. Now I let
The waters grind me, knowing well that the sweet
Daybreak behind your eyes

Will not be struck dead by any wind,
And we will walk on the shore
A day older, while the yoked waves thunder,
As if the storm were a dream. Sleep sound.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Appologies

Appologies for the delay in posting this week. I managed, somehow, to blow up my graphics card and have been unable to access my computer. Thankfully, I have been able to purloin some computer time at work!
Hopefully once the graphics card is replaced, I can recommence posting each morning.
Thanks for your understanding :D

Election 1960 – James K. Baxter

Election 1960 – James K. Baxter

Hot sun. Lizards frolic
Fly-catching on the black ash

That was green rubbish. Tiny dragons,
They dodge among the burnt broom stems

As if the earth belonged to them
Without condition. In the polling booths

A democratic people have elected
King Log, King Stork, King Log, King Stork again.

Because I like a wide and silent pond
I voted Log. That party was defeated.

Now frogs will dive and scuttle to avoid
That poking idiot bill, the iron gullet:

Delinquent frogs! Stork is an active King,
A bird of principle, benevolent,

And Log is Log, an old time-serving post
Hacked from a totara when the land was young.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

My Love Late Walking – James K. Baxter

My Love Late Walking – James K. Baxter

My love late walking in the rain’s white aisles
I break words for, through many tongues
Of night deride and the moon’s bone yard smile

Cuts to the quick of our newborn sprig of song.
See and believe, my love, the late yield
Of bright grain, the sparks of harvest wrung

From difficult joy. My heart is an open field.
There you may stray wide or stand at home
Nor dread the giant’s bone and broken shield

Or any tendril locked on a thunder stone,
Nor fear, in the forked grain, my hawk who flies
Down to your feathered sleep alone

Striding blood coloured on a wind of sighs.
Let him at the heart of your true dream move,
My love, in the lairs of hope behind your eyes.

I sing, to the rain’s harp, of light renewed,
The black tares broken, fresh the phoenix light
I lost among time’s rags and burning tombs.

My love walks long in harvest aisles tonight.


On the death of her body – James K. Baxter

It is a thought breaking the granite heart
Time has given me, that one treasure,
Your limbs, those passion-vines, that bamboo body

Should age and slacken, rot
Some day in a ghastly clay-stopped hole.
They led me to the mountains beyond pleasure

Where each is not gross body or blank soul
But a strongharpo the wind of genesis
Makes music in, such resonant music

That I was Adam, loosened byyour kiss
Form time’s hard bond, and you,
My love, in the world’s first summer stood

Plucking the flowers of the abyss.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

On the death of her body – James K. Baxter

On the death of her body – James K. Baxter

It is a thought breaking the granite heart
Time has given me, that one treasure,
Your limbs, those passion-vines, that bamboo body

Should age and slacken, rot
Some day in a ghastly clay-stopped hole.
They led me to the mountains beyond pleasure

Where each is not gross body or blank soul
But a strong harp the wind of genesis
Makes music in, such resonant music

That I was Adam, loosened by your kiss
Form time’s hard bond, and you,
My love, in the world’s first summer stood

Plucking the flowers of the abyss.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Intimacy - Raymond Ward

Intimacy - Raymond Ward

The house is nailed up and boarded in
by a tall fence of ain;
drab windows laces with team
and in the corners of the ceiling
twilight of a stormy afternoon.
No calls anticipated.
Gone from the mantelpiece the clock:
for once time will not tell,
safely bound in the bottom drawer
and gagged with a bed sock.


The Morgue – James K. Baxter

Each morning when I lit the coke furnace
Unwillingly I passed the locked door,
The room where Death lived. Shadowless infection
Looked form the blind panes, and an open secret
Stained even the red flowers in the rock garden
Flesh-fingered under the sanatorium wall.

And each day the patients coming and going
From light jobs, joking below the sombre pines,
Would pass without looking, their faces leaner
As if the wintry neighbourhood of Death
Would strip the shuddering flesh from bone. They shouted,
Threw clods at one another, and passed on.

But when at length, with stiff broom and bucket,
I opened the door wide – well, there was nothing
To fear. Only the bare close concrete wall,
A slab of stone, and a wheeled canvas stretcher.
For Death had shifted house to his true home
And mansion, ruinous, of the human heart.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Ode to an urban day – Raymond Ward

Ode to an urban day – Raymond Ward

The urban day has got her blue straw hat on
the one with the yellow rose in it
and her grey eyes beneath it
are cool and smiling.
Wherever the streets go
and there are people
her walk is leisurely:

in the early morning she sands in the shade
in the part at noon she will feed the pigeons
in the evening she will wave good-bye to us –

you understand,
she is not working very hard today,
she is there to look pretty.

In her dove-grey dress
she is warm but not uncomfortable
and she is not dusty:
late last night she had a shower
and another this morning;
so her skin is fresh
and her breath sweet.

From time to time she pauses –
before shop windows and pools of ain
to admire her reflection,
then, smiling, strolls on.
She is lovely today
and she knows it:

she will stand at bus stops
and wait. Although the buses pull up
she remains where she is –
she does not mind when people stare
she does not think them indiscreet.

If one tries to take her photograph
she laughs,
for she is always changing
and no camera has a nose.
She does not belong to us.
We belong to her,
no matter what mood she is in.
But we must not ignore her –
to remain is not enough.

Evening is the time, if any, for departure
but today she does not wish to leave us
nor does she wish to see us leave:

she stands there in her faded blue straw hat
looking for the rose – which must have come untied
as if to say, would someone be so kind…?

then she begins to wander
in and out of doorways
from one street to the next…

but we have lost her now
grey as the corner she is huddled into
for the night,

still sweet, her fragrance lingers
in the pool of night rain
where the rose has fallen…




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Watching Snow – Raymond Ward

Watching Snow – Raymond Ward

You were standing at the window, silently
when the first flakes began to fall
between the houses, to settle in the boughs
of the leafless elm and in the yard below;
and so intently were you watching them
spin through the early winter gloom
to catch in fences, heap on the window sill,
you did not notice when I spoke to you.

So I fell silent, too. But now,
not just because the snow enchanted me:
the way you stood there like a memory
re-awakened so much tenderness
I had thought buried long ago
nostalgic, maternal as the falling snow,
that I was glad when you made no reply.
Nearness enough to watch you standing there,

and as intently as you watched the snow:
it gathered slowly, darkening your hair
and shoulders, till your outline only, drained
like a negative, at last remained,
sharp against the window veiled with steam.
You must have known that I was watching you,
pierced by the memory a snowflake clears,
or why were you also, when you turned, in tears?



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Holiday Piece - Denis Glover

Holiday Piece - Denis Glover

Now let my thoughts be like the Arrow, wherein was gold,
And purposeful like the Kawarau, but not so cold.

Let them sweep higher than the hawk ill-omened,
Higher than peaks perspective-piled beyond Ben Lomond;
Let them be like at evening an Otago sky
Where detonated clouds in calm confusion lie.

Let them be smooth and sweet as all those morning lakes,
Yet active and leaping, like fish the fisherman takes;
And strong as the dark deep-rooted hills, strong
As twilight ours over Lake Wakatipu are long;

And hardy, like the tenacious mountain tussock,
And spacious, like the Mackenzie plain, not narrow;
And numerous, as tourists in Queenstown;
And cheerfully busy, like the gleaning sparrow.

Lastly, that snowfield, visible from Wanaka,
Compound their patience - suns only brighten,
And no rains darken, a whiteness nothing could whiten.



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Dreams - Richard von Sturmer

Dreams - Richard von Sturmer


As the sun slips below the horizon, a swan closes its eyes
At a Chinese restaurant, a Chinese waiter eats his evening meal with a knife and fork
A woman drops her child on the carpet, and instead of crying it laughs
In the car-wrecker’s yard, fragments of window glass sparkle in the sunlight
A strip of red balloon hangs from the beak of a seagull

*

After a fight at school, acorns are found on the toilet floor
At the edge of a storm, someone is heard sweeping leaves
In the back garden, rain drips from the eaves of a doll’s house
The sunset glows pink inside the ears of a black dog
In a takeaway bar, a machine for killing flies is switched on

*

A man holds a bicycle wheel and walks into a cathedral
In the middle of summer, a band-aid has melted on the asphalt
A wooden swan sits in a bakery, its back hollowed out and filled with loaves of bread
A wasp picks up a single grain of rice, disappears, then returns to pick up another grain
The dark clouds are darker through the skylight of a limousine

*

When its master blows down a cardboard tube, the dog cocks its head to one side
A wire coat-hanger is found lying in the snow, and later on, a slice of white bread
A man sells oranges in front of an empty field that stretches towards the horizon
On the beach at night, as the fire dies down, the sound of the ocean increases

*

A jogger runs past with "Stop Acid Rain" printed on his tee-shirt
In the crowded men’s room, all three toilet doors change from "occupied" to "vacant" at the same time
At a serious accident, an ambulance arrives before the tow trucks
The letters on a tomato sign are the same red as the tomatoes
When the corn field is harvested, the hedgerows rustle with mice

*

At the airport, baggage tickets hang from the circular light above the check-in desk
A steel girder casts its shadow across the side of a concrete building
A gust of wind sends the cellophane from a cigarette packet high up into the evening sky
On a late-night bus, an old man smelling of beer manages to complete a crossword puzzle
A cat slips between two candles without singeing its tail

*

Cleaning under his bed, a writer finds his lost pen covered in dust
In the archeological museum, a series of crystalline pings are heard when the lights are switched on
Two painters in white overalls each stand on a white ladder and paint the same building white
In the Japanese garden, a carp with a human face glides by
On a corrugated iron roof, a seagull opens and closes its beak

*

A pile of cigarette butts lies at the end of a long pier
In a house by the sea, a man in his night-shirt is changing a light-bulb
In the hair salon, a small girl places two red plastic straws in her hair
An empty cassette box shines like a pool of water on a dark bedspread
The shadow of a cat sits on the shadow of a fence

*

Outside a tropical hotel, a hotel worker is struck by a large leaf
A young mother drives around the block until her babies are fast asleep
A chandelier of icicles hangs from the underside of a rusted fire-escape
Light shines through a blowfly as it settles on a television screen
Lotuses are opening beneath high-tension wires

*

An ice-cream van breaks down right beside a waterfall
A dog barks, and snow falls from a tree



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/sturmer.asp

Hinemoa’s daughter - Apirana Taylor

Hinemoa’s daughter - Apirana Taylor


her hair is so long
you could plait it all the way to the moon
and weave it with a sprinkling of stars

she writes poetry
as only the muse can write

when she smiles
she melts the heart of God

‘I’m from Te Arawa she says’

she shows me her litany of scars
they climb like ladders
up the insides of her wrists

deep savage cuts to the bone
speak of her youth and the countless times
she sent herself along the path of the spirits
and sought the solace of Hine nui te po

like her tipuna Hinemoa
she swam the lake
but her lake was of fire and death
broken bottles drunken fights
smashed families shattered and scattered whanau

and she made it
she crossed the troubled water
and found her tane who loves her
more deeply than the heart can tell

in the city of the lost
they raise many fine young children
with aroha



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/taylor.asp

By Ships We Live - Bill Sewell

By Ships We Live - Bill Sewell


It was a tingling in the balls that told them,
like edging too close to a rock face:

a twist of the tide, the slop of the swell,
the mercenary attentions of seabirds.

Out of the blue they broke,
the sails, the expectations, the names.

Takitimu, Heemskerck, Endeavour:
how they transported their history

as a deadening freight, as baggage,
barnacles clinging like grievances to the keel.

Then the commerce would begin:
footprints for sand; words for silence.

There, not just as the unusual event,
the sudden flaw on the curve,

but by the month, by the day,
feeling their way along the chart

for that orifice in the cliffs
and making their run through the heads:

Orpheus, Tararua, Penguin,
all finding out just how intolerant

of carelessness this coast can be,
once you sail out of line.

Yet the masts still thickened ashore,
the funnels exhaled bad faith

(according to the terms of the bargain).
While men went below as into a mine

to dig out the lampblack
that darkened their days and their lungs

and the names of the ships that carried it:
Korowai, Myrtlebank, Asunçion de Larrinaga.



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/sewell.asp

A Poem for God - L. E. Scott

A Poem for God - L. E. Scott


I've lain with the preacher-man's wife
I've lost my innocence
She sings in the United Methodist Church
My grandmother once said from the Good Book:
The sins of the father will visit the son
There ain't no God if this is true

A letter from a long-lost friend came
Telling me and asking me did I remember
Patricia Strongman? - She's dead
Her mouth is full of dirt
Her face is dissipating
My childhood was yesterday
My grandmother still reads from the Good Book
And in the graveyard
So many of my friends no longer speak to me
As cold, as cold, as a winter's windowpane

Standing by the door singing a spiritual
Is a one-eyed blind man
Talking about all God's children
But he doesn't say what
Perhaps he could say:
In my father's house
there are many mansions
if it were not so
I would have told you

I am going away
to prepare a place for you
that where I am
there ye may be also
In my father's house

Standing by the door singing a spiritual
Is a one-eyed blind man
Talking about all God's children
But he doesn't say what

Day before, when I was nothing but a snotty-nosed child
Your Mama used to whop me for doing wrong
Gave me a note to take home and
My Mama whopped me again
The preacher-man has died in my life
And I'm still being whopped
I've been a Baptist all my life
Did Mary feel good when she conceived?
In other words, an orgasm
Did Jesus Christ ever shit when he walked
The earth?
In the winter time if you don't mind the cold
You can walk on water
A miracle is nothing more than a season in your life

In front of the church, near the pulpit
The fat women sit
Swaying and sweating
Bright red nail polish
Who wants to be born again




http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/scott.asp

Carnival of Chocolate - Jenny Powell-Chalmers

Carnival of Chocolate - Jenny Powell-Chalmers


Roll up roll up
to the city of dreams
the city of gold
that will hold your heart
in the hills,
Dunedin!

Roll up to the city of chocolate,
the Cumberland Castle of Cadbury
heavenly home of Flakes and Freddos
Picnics and Peppys, Chocolate Fish,
every bar you could possibly wish.

Roll down your Giant Jaffas
from the tip of the top
of the steepest street, paint
the face of a modern madonna
whose mouth is munching
her melting Crunchie, sample
the wares of a chocolate fair,
at the city cafes demand for yourself
the Cadbury Carnival dish of the day.

Roll out roll out the raspberry carpet
to Cadbury World and open the doors
with a fanfare, a flourish of fabulous
flair and let your mind feel free to fly

travel in time to the Aztec
King who drinks cup after cup
of some bitter stuff; an early
hot chocolate, he can’t get enough

sip on the 1700’s brew, a balm
for the mouth, a cleanser of sins,
a substitute for the evils of gin

flip into Yowie fantasy to guard
our mountains, rivers and sea,
where time is a cosmic infinity
a Cadbury chocolate mystery

follow a path of perfect Pinkys
around the planet and when
you want more, gaze into space
at the Assorted Milk Trays, gasp
at the dazzling chocolate display

nibble a Nougat, a Coffee Cream,
a Turkish Delight throughout
the night for the promise of passion
the lustre of love, the drift
of a Dairy Milk decadent dream

Roll up roll up
to the chocolate city,
Roll up roll up
to the Cadbury World.



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/chalmers.asp

Otesánek - Olivia Macassey

Otesánek - Olivia Macassey

"Oh dear, how frightened I have been," said Little Red Riding Hood, when she was rescued, "it is so dark inside the wolf." (source: JLC and WC Grimm)


I'm worrying about the monsters under the house.
I'm trying to untie that beautiful knot we had all agreed upon
the one that is a serpent, swallowing its tail.

The quickest way to a man's heart
is through his stomach, and as for love,
can it be this – the thousands of papercuts made against the sky
by the short needled pine? I went all the way to the end of the beach
asking myself that famous question.
But we were haemorhaging that year, epistemohaemophilia, nothing was that clear, except the sky
and even that wasn’t watching, well not at first..
He opened his mouth and this gave me the opportunity to slip inside
and start to unravel things.

Oh Otesánek. I would have fed you with everyone I knew
(and they half knew it)
simple and cruel, as in harsh weather, a good mistress,
accidental death under the machinery of a factory

What will happen to you if you don’t eat your vegetables?
What will happen if you eat too much of the pie
eat seven little kids; or seven small gods, and a rock, drink
all the water in the world, and turn to me?

Is kissing really the reassurance that we don’t have to bite,
the accomplished, formulaic, and quick tongued demonstration
of the boundaries we're willing to keep;
the edges you admit you can see
between me
and the skin of your teeth?

the endless thereness of here has ended
the figures at the other end of the beach turn back
and begin to retrace their
half washed out footprints
already a little surprised to see
where one had scuffed or the other one leaped

Oh Otesánek, I would feed you to everyone I know, and they know it now
It gets so dark inside the wolf.
Not simple, or cruel. But I didn’t understand
I don’t understand
I won't understand.

We go – down – the garden path
six foot then one foot, then
one, foot, in front of, the other,
we go into the back of the house
one kiss then two kisses;
one, kiss, in stead of, the other,

and staggering. down the last lot of steps
into the cellar
we know it all now
follow the blind, look through the gaps
lift up the latch
and swallow them whole



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/macassey.asp

Skins - Rob Jackaman

Skins - Rob Jackaman
(part 7 of the sequence ‘Rockyhorrorton’)


It was the weekend Elton John was in town,
and we went (for old times’ sake) down to the
Wallies a GoGo where they were re-doing
the sixties (yet again). Afterwards you said
you had a headache (didn’t we all, darling)
and were going home. So I sat on my step
and watched the bonfire next door: it was only
some time later I wondered why there was
a bonfire next door, and how come it seemed
so close. But of course, as Robert Frost nearly
said, "Something there is that doesn’t love a
fence" ¾ and the local lads (clearly aesthetes
in spite of a lack of hair) had taken him
at his word and done their bit to break down
the barriers between neighbours. Certainly
that old creosoted wood made a fair
blaze ¾ too much for some, who dialled 1-1-1.
Now the Fire Brigade I could cope with, but when
the Riot Squad arrived I began to fear
for my petunias. The suburb was ringing
to the music of broken bottles on plexiglass
shields: this is unusual, I thought, as I settled
down behind a protective coating of sherry.
I guessed the next day would be messy, but hell
next day was still more than a bottle
away.



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/jackaman.asp

War – Childhood - Riemeke Ensing

War – Childhood - Riemeke Ensing


Images sear themselves
into the retina of the heart.
All those memories –
stones weighted to fell.
Even the rhododendron
a splash of blood in the garden,
or parachute silk fallen from sky
on a clear day
at the start of life
and the shot forever echoing
in poems. A thousand fragments
glistening as stars flashing signs.
Fathers, mothers, all the families
up there sharing the promise of stories,
the nostalgia of song, the friction of clouds
rushing to meet where blues speak.
From the landscape of the face
I lick salt.



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/ensing.asp

Gallipoli Peninsula - Alistair Te Ariki Campbell

Gallipoli Peninsula - Alistair Te Ariki Campbell


It was magical when flowers
appeared on the upper reaches –
not that we saw much of the upper reaches.
But when we did,
we were reminded of home
when spring clothed the hills with flowers.
The dead lying among them
seemed to be asleep.
I can never forget the early mornings,
before the killings started up,
when the sea was like a mirror
under little wisps of cloud
breathing on its surface, so dazzling
it hurt the eye.
and the ships, so many of them,
they darkened the sea.
But the evenings too were magical,
with such hues in the sky
over Macedonia,
so many colours, gold bars,
green, red, and yellow.
We noticed these things,
when the firing stopped and we had respite.
It was good to feel,
during such moments,
that we were human beings once more,
delighting in little things,
in just being human.



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/campbell.asp

Flax - Julia Allen

Flax - Julia Allen


flax
whips
air

flickering red at the edges

and as for Dionysus
(in articulo mortis)
at the point of death

a veil falls
over the eyes
light flickers
over the eyelids

and as for that statue
that you pray to
that inarticulate Mater
you pray to, say

flax
cracks at the water
and lashes
at the water’s edge



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/allen.asp

Friends far away die - Janet Frame

Friends far away die …


Friends far away die
Friends measured always in blocks of distance
Cement of love between
Porous to tears and ocean spray
How vast the Pacific!
How heavy the unmiracled distance to walk upon,
A slowly sinking dream, a memory undersea.
Untouched now, Sue, by storm
Easy to reach
An angel-moment away,
Hostess of memories in your long green gown, your
small blue
Slippers lying on the white sofa
In the room I once knew — the tall plants behind
you — I remember I watered them and found some
were fake
And I shrugged, thinking it’s part of life

To feed the falseness, the artificial, but no,
you fed only truth
You cut down every growing pretence with one cool
glance.
We were at home with you.
We knew, as people say, where we stood.
Your beloved John of the real skin and uncopied
eyes was anxious for you
In true anxiety.

Well, you will visit me in moments.
You will be perplexed yet wise, as usual.
Perhaps we will drink won ton soup
I promise you. No food will hurt you now.



http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/frame.asp

Letter from the Mountains - James K. Baxter

Letter from the Mountains - James K. Baxter


There was a message. I have forgotten it.
There was a journey to make. It did not come to anything.
But these nights, my friend, under the iron roof
Of this old rabbiters' hut where the traps
Are still hanging up on nails,
Lying in a dry bunk, I feel strangely at ease.
The true dreams, those longed-for strangers,
Begin to come to me through the gates of horn.

I will not explain them. But the city, all that other life
In which we crept sadly like animals
Through thickets of dark thorns, haunted by the moisture of women,
And the rock of barren friendship, has now another shape.
Yes, I thank you. I saw you rise like a Triton,
A great reddish gourd of flesh,
From the sofa at that last party, while your mistress smiled
That perfect smile, and shout as if drowning—
'You are always—'
Despair is the only gift;
When it is shared, it becomes a different thing; like rock, like water;
And so you also can share this emptiness with me.

Tears from faces of stone. They are our own tears.
Even if I had forgotten them
The mountain that has taken my being to itself
Would still hang over this hut, with the dead and the living
Twined in its crevasses. My door has forgotten how to shut.



http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179899

Tomcat - James K. Baxter

Tomcat - James K. Baxter

This tomcat cuts across
zones of the respectable
through fences, walls, following
other routes, his own. I see
the sad whiskered skull-mouth fall
wide, complainingly, asking

to be picked up and fed, when
I thump up the steps through bush
at 4tm. He has no
dignity, thank God! Has grown
older, scruffier, the ash-
black coat sporting one or two

flowers like round stars, badges
of bouts and fights. The snake head
is seamed on top with rough scars:
old Samurai! He lodges
in cellars, and the tight furred
scrotum drives him into wars

As if mad, yet tumbling on
the rug looks female, Turkish-
Trousered. His bagpipe shriek at
Sluggish dawn dragged me out in
Pyjamas to comb the bush
(he being under the vet

for septic bites). The old fool
stood, body hard as a board,
heart thudding, hair on end, at
the house corner, terrible,
yelling at something. They said
'Get him doctored.' I think not.



http://www.discussanything.com/forums/showthread.php/32174-The-Poetry-of-James-K.-Baxter

Poem in the Matukituki Valley - James K. Baxter

Poem in the Matukituki Valley - James K. Baxter

Some few yards from the hut the standing beeches
Let fall their dead limbs, overgrown
With feathered moss and filigree of bracken.
The rotted wood splits clean and hard
Close-grained to the driven axe; with sound of water
Sibilant falling and high nested birds.

In winter blind with snow; but in full summer
The forest blanket sheds its cloudy pollen
And cloaks a range in undevouring fire.
Remote the land's heart; though the wild scrub cattle
Acclimatized, may learn
Shreds of her purpose, or the taloned kea.

For those who come as I do, half-aware,
Wading the swollen
Matukituki waist-high in snow water,
And stumbling where the mountains throw their dice
Of boulders huge as houses, or the smoking
Cataract flings its arrows on our path -

For us the land is matrix and destroyer,
Resentful, darkly known
By sunset omens, low words heard in branches;
Or where the red deer lift their innocent heads
Snuffing the wind for danger,
And from our footfall's menace bound in terror.

Three emblems of the heart I carry folded
As charms against flood water, sliding shale:
Pale gentian, lily, and bush orchid.
The peaks too have names to suit their whiteness,
Stargazer and Moonraker,
A sailor's language and a mountaineer's.

And those who sleep in close bags fitfully
Besieged by wind in a snowline bivouac -
The carrion parrot with red underwing
Clangs on the roof by night, and daybreak brings
Raincloud on purple ranges, light reflected
Stainless from crumbling glacier, dazzling snow,

Do they not, clay in that unearthly furnace,
Endure the hermit's peace
And mindless ecstasy? Blue-lipped crevasse
And smooth rock chimney straddling - a communion
With what eludes our net - Leviathan
Stirring to ocean birth our inland waters?

Sky's purity; the altar cloth of snow
On deathly summits laid; or avalanche
That shakes the rough moraine with giant laughter;
Snowplume and whirlwind - what are these
But His flawed mirror who gave the mountain strength
And dwells in holy calm, undying freshness?

Therefore we turn, hiding our souls' dullness
From that too blinding glass: turn to the gentle
Dark of our human daydream, child and wife,
Patience of stone and soil, the lawful city
Where man may live, and no wild trespass
Of what's eternal shake his grave of time.

Dreams, Yellow Lions – Alistair Campbell

Dreams, Yellow Lions – Alistair Campbell

When I was young
I used to dream of girls
and mountains.

Now it is water I dream of,
placid among trees, or lifting
casually on a shore.

Where yellow lions come out
in the early morning
and stare out to sea.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The gunfighter – Alistair Campbell

The gunfighter – Alistair Campbell

You will see him any day in Te Kuiti
or Cannons Creek,
immaculate in black
and triggered like a panther on the prowl.

Conscious of all eyes,
but indifferent to all except the heroine
watching from behind lace curtains,
doom walks the main street of a small town.

Is it fear or admiration that widens
those lovely eyes?
He knows her eyes are on him,
but gives no sign he knows –
he has a job to do.

The sun has reached high noon.
The shadows stand with flattened palms
against the walls of buildings,
or shrink back into doorways.
The heroine lets fall the curtain.
She has fallen –
drilled clean through the heart with love.

Now he stands alone
in the pool of his own shadow,
his wrists flexible as a dancing girl’s,
his palms hovering like butterflies
over the blazing butts of his six-guns.

The streets are cleared,
the township holds its breath –
for the gunfighter, the terrible gunfighter
is in town.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Purple chaos – Alistair Campbell

Purple chaos – Alistair Campbell

‘Chaos is purple,’ you said.
‘A painter’s phrase,’ I said,
disagreeing.
‘Chaos is a colourless force
tossing up stars, flowers
and children,
and has no beginning
and no end.’
But lying in bed,
washed up,
I know you are right.
You were talking of something else –
You were talking of death.
Purple chaos has surged through me,
leaving me stranded –
a husk,
an empty shell
on a long whit swerving beach.

Something has died,
something precious has died.
It may have been a flower,
a star,
it may have been a child –
but whatever it was, my love,
it seems to have died.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Gathering Mushrooms – Alistair Campbell

Gathering Mushrooms – Alistair Campbell

Dried thistles hide his face.
Look closely –
that's your enemy.
Ants carry away his flesh,
but still he grins.
You know him by his thumbs,
round and white,
breaking the earth like mushrooms,
coated with fine sand.

A bony finger flicks a bird
into your face,
daises snap at your heels,
nostrils
flare in the ground
that you believed was solid –
and a dark wind rides
the whinnying tussock up the hillside.

Gather your mushrooms then,
and, if you dare,
ignore the thin cries of the dammed
issuing through the gills.

Sick of running away,
you drop in the soaking grass.
Through tears
you watch a snail climbing a straw
that creaks and bends
under its weight,
and note how tenderly it lifts
upon its shoulder
the fallen weight of the sky.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Why don’t you talk to me? – Alistair Campbell

Why don’t you talk to me? – Alistair Campbell

Why do I post my love letters
in a hollow log?
Why put my lips to a knothole in a tree
and whisper your name?

The spiders spread their nets
and catch the sun,
and by my foot in the dry grass
ants rebuild a broken city.
Butterflies pair in the wind,
and the yellow bee,
his holsters packed with bread,
rides the blue air like a drunken cowboy.

More and more I find myself
talking to the sea.
I am alone with my footsteps.
I watch the tide recede,
and I am left with miles of shining sand.

Why don’t you talk to me?




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Blue Rain – Alistair Campbell

Blue Rain – Alistair Campbell

Blue rain from a clear sky.
Our world a cube of sunlight –
but to the south
the violet admonition
of thunder.

Innocent as flowers,
your eyes with their thick lashes
open in green surprise.

What have we to fear?
Frost and a sharp wind
reproach us,
and a tall sky pelts the roof
with blue flowers.

You and I in bed, my love,
heads leaning together,
merry as thieves
eating stolen honey –
what have we to fear
but a borrowed world
collapsing all about us
in blue ruins?




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

At a fishing settlement – Alistair Campbell

At a fishing settlement – Alistair Campbell

October, and a rain-blurred face,
And all the anguish of that bitter place.
It was a bare sea-battered town,
With its one street leading down
On to a shingly beach. Sea winds
Had long picked the dark hills clean
Of everything but tussock and stones
And pines that dropped small brittle cones
On to a soured soil. And old houses flanking
The street hung poised like driftwood planking
Blown together and could not outlast
The next window-shuddering blast
From the storm-whitened sea.
It was bitterly cold; I could see
Where muffled against gusty spray
She walked the clinking shingle; a straw
Dog whimpered and pushed a small
Wet nose into my hand – that is all.
Yet I am haunted by that face,
That dog, and that bare bitter place.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Laid-out body – Alistair Campbell

The Laid-out body – Alistair Campbell

Now grace, strength and pride
Have flown like the hawk;
The mind like the spring tide,

Beautiful and calm; the talk;
The brilliance of eye and hand;
The feet that no longer walk.

All is new, and all strange –
Terrible as a dusty gorge
Where a great river sang.


Daisy Pinks – Alistair Campbell

O catch Miss Daisy Pinks
Undressing behind her hair;
She slides open like a drawer
Oiled miraculously by a stare.

O the long cool limbs,
The ecstatic shot of hair,
And untroubled eyes
With their thousand mile stare.

Her eyes are round as marigolds,
Her navel drips with honey,
Her pulse is even, and her laugh
Crackles like paper money.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Hut near desolate pines – Alistair Campbell

Hut near desolate pines – Alistair Campbell

Cobwebs and dust have long
Deadened an old man’s agony.
The choked fireplace, the chair
On its side on the mud floor,
May have warmed an old man’s
Bones or propped them upright
While his great head nodded;
Fantastical images may have stirred
His mind when the wind moaned
And sparks leapt up the chimney
With a roar. But what great gust
Of the imagination threw wide
The door and smashed the lap
And overturned both table and chair…?
A rabbiter found him sprawled
By the door – no violence, nothing
To explain, but the hungry rats
That scurried over the fouled straw.
A foolish lonely old man
With his whiskers matted with dung.
Since when birds have stuffed the chimney
With straw, and a breeze flapped
Continually through the sack window;
And all the wile the deft spiders
Doodled away at their obituaries,
And the thin dust fell from the rafters…
Nothing but cobwebs and dust
Sheeting an old man’s agony




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Now he is dead - Alistair Campbell

Now he is dead - Alistair Campbell

Now he is dead, who talked
Of wild places and skies
Inhabited by the hawk;

Of the hunted hare that flies
Down bare parapets of stone,
And there closes its eyes;

Of trees fast-rooted in stone
Winds bend but cannot break;
Of the low terrible moan

That dead thorn trees make
On a windy desolate knoll;
Of the storm-blackened lake

Where heavy breakers roll
Out of the snow-bred mist,
When the glittering air is cold;

Of the Lion Rock that lifts
Out of the whale-backed waves
Its black sky-battering cliffs;

Of the waterfall that raves
Down the dark mountain side,
And into a white cauldron dives.






O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Parakeet - Keith Sinclair

The Parakeet - Keith Sinclair

Shadows of bars suggest perhaps,
If memory slumbers behind
Those jeweled eyes, eucalypts
Festooned with bark strips, ribboned
With light. But his scream echoes
From farther than Bimberi Peak
Before a word of thought arose
To sing or check the slash of beak.
Clapper in a wire bell, voice
Of a demon in a nun’s dream,
Chiming, enticing, then raucous
With a mad, a mindless glee;
His glaze was baked in a volcanic kiln.
Was his the first loudness to rage
Glittering over a slow, reptilian
Earth? Anachronism caged
He sits, a focus of unease –
As though, a sailor’s pet, he might
Spout blasphemies to greet the visitors.
Perhaps (his own augur) it is not the light
Of past that keeps him spry: he wakes
Us to an instant’s fear that this
May be the sunrise he awaits,
His inheritance of flame, a citrus
Strip in smoking morning, wing-slashed,
And Sydney a screeching desert.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Displacement – Herbert Witheford

The Displacement – Herbert Witheford

How can I look at my unhappiness
As it puts its hand over the side
Of the crumbling old well
And hooks itself up?
I know without opening my eyes
It is ugly,
It is mine.
It is really not unhappiness at all,
Who is to tell what it is?
It is something pressing up toward the light;
I call it ugly but feel only it is obscene,
A native, perhaps beautiful, of the vast deep.


O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Cloud Burst – Herbert Witheford

Cloud Burst – Herbert Witheford

The fuchsia and I seem happy now.
Up from the sun-hard soil the rain is bouncing
And lightning bursts out of the afternoon.
The radio
Crackles with anger much more lively than the dim
Threats of peace-loving statesmen that it drowns.
Closer
Reverberations. Flower-pots overflow.
Even the heart
Has burst it calyx of anxieties;
The spouting
Cascades superbly into two brown shoes
Put carefully – by someone else – out in the yard.
The lightning makes a difference to the room.


O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.