When the sun shines more years than fear - Janet Frame

When the sun shines more years than fear
- Janet Frame

When the sun shines more years than fear
when birds fly more miles than anger
when sky holds more bird
sails more cloud
shines more sun
than the palm of love carries hate,
even then shall I in this weary
seventy-year banquet say, Sunwaiter,
Birdwaiter, Skywaiter,
I have no hunger,
remove my plate.

Rain on the roof - Janet Frame

Rain on the roof
- Janet Frame

My nephew sleeping in a basement room
has put a sheet of iron outside his window
to recapture the sound of rain falling on the roof.

I do not say to him, The heart has its own comfort for grief.
A sheet of iron repairs roofs only. As yet unhurt by the demand
that change and difference never show, he is still able
to mend damages by creating the loved rain-sound
he thinks he knew in early childhood.

Nor do I say, In the traveling life of loss
iron is a burden, that one day he must find
within himself in total darkness and silence
the iron that will hold not only the lost sound of the rain
but the sun, the voices of the dead, and all else that has gone.

The Clown - Janet Frame

The Clown
- Janet Frame

His face is streaked with prepared tears.
I, with others, applaud him, knowing it
is fashionable to approve when a clown cries
and to disapprove when a persistent sour face
does whether or not his tears are paint.

It is also fashionable, between wars,
to say that hate is love and love is hate,
to make out everything is more complex than we dreamed
and then to say we did not dream it,
we knew it all along and are wise.

Dear crying clown dear childlike man
dear kind murderer dear innocent guilty
dear simplicity I hate you for making me pretend
there are several worlds to one truth when
I know, I know there are not. Dear people like you and me
whose breaths are bad, who sleep in and rumble
their bowels and control it until
they get home into the empty house or among the family
dear family, dear lonely man in torn world of nobody,
is it for this waste that we have hoarded words over so many
million years since the first, groan,
and look up at the stars. Oh oh the sky is too wide to sleep under!

Yet another poem about a dying child - Janet Frame

Yet another poem about a dying child
- Janet Frame

Poets and parents say he cannot die
so young, so tied to trees and stars.
Their word across his mouth obscures
and cures his murmuring good-bye.
He babbles, they say, of spring flowers,

Who for six months has lain
his flesh at a touch bruised violet,
his face pale, his hate clearer
that milky love that would smooth over
the pebbles of diseased bone.

Pain spangles him like the sun,
He cries and cannot say why.
His blood blossoms like a pear tree.
He does not want to eat or keep
its ugly windfall fruit.

He does not want to spend or share
the engraved penny of light
that birth put in his hand
telling him to hold on tight.
Will parents and poets not understand?

He must sleep, rocking the web of pain
till the kind furred spider will come
with the night-lamp eyes and soft tread
to wrap him warm and carry him home
to a dark place, and eat him.

The Perfect Symbol - Louis Johnson

The Perfect Symbol
- Louis Johnson

I remember reading as a boy, Giotto,
Asked for a picture fit for a Pope's wall,
Picked up a brush, painted the perfect circle,
And offered this as prize to the puzzled pontiff
Whose shocked reaction was a dark reproof.
'No, sir,' the painter answered, 'Nothing less
Than this would be apt gift for your great grace.
This line is endless and beings nowhere.
It contains all the truth a man might know
And is a barrier excluding dross.
Or, it's a world, and outside it, the heavens
And every aspiration worthy of him.
I made it with one stroke: you cannot tell
Where I began it, only that, through grace,
Patience, the pain of all my craft,
I made what Nature does not make - the circle;
The thing enclosed, entire, perfection's symbol.'

Humbled, his master gave it pride of place
Upon the palace wall, and no doubt gave
Much thought as well to what might burn within
A peasant breast that beat beyond itself
In realm of contemplation learning strove for
Without, always, the same degrees of insight.
Then let Giotto's circle stand for those
Who see beyond the lines and shapes of things,
The orders, and the ordering of men's lives,
And all the passing show, to what might be
Ultimate truths contained in a simple act,
The maker's hand unveiling what is hidden
From understanding by what's understood,
And what is real surprisingly revealed,
Hard, simple, whole, something to stand forever.



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

Rain - Hone Tuwhare

My all time favorite poem. Ever.

Rain - Hone Tuwhare

I can hear you making
small holes in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind:

the steady drum-roll
sound you make
when the wind drops

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

But if I should not
hear
smell or feel or see you

You would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain



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

Muscle and Bone of Song - Hone Tuwhare

Muscle and Bone of Song
- Hone Tuwhare

And of trees and the rive
no more say
that these alone are sources
for the deft song and the sad:
nor from wave-curl and the sun
cross moon wind and hail
calm and storm come.

Joyously I sing
to the young girl's hip-knock
and taunt: swing-cheerful breasts
shape my hands
to eternal begging-bowls.


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

The Girl in the Park - Hone Tuwhare

The Girl in the Park
- Hone Tuwhare

The girl in the park
saw a nonchalant sky
shrug into a blue-dark
denim coat.

The girl in the park
did not reach up to touch
the cold steel buttons.

The girl in the park
saw the moon glide
into a dead tree's arms
and felt the vast night
pressing.
How huge it seems
and the trees are big she said.
The stars head her
and swooped down perching
on tree-top and branch
owl-like and unblinking.

The grave trees,
as muscular as her lover
leaned darkly down to catch
the moonrise and madness
in here eyes:
the moon is big, it is very big
she said with velvet in her throat.

An owl hooted.
The trees scarped and nudged
each other and the stars
carried the helpless
one-ribbed moon away...

The girl in the park
does not care: her body swaying
to the dark-edged chant
of storms


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

The Old Place - Hone Tuwhare

The Old Place - Hone Tuwhare

No one comes
by way of the doughy track
through straggly tea tree bush
and gorse, past the hidden spring
and bitter cress.

Under the chill moon's light
no one cares to look upon
the drunken fence-posts
and the gate white with moss.

No one except the wind
saw the old place
make her final curtsy
to the sky and earth:

and in no protesting sense
did iron and barbed wire
ease to the rust's invasion
nor twang more tautly
to the wind's slap and scream.

On the cream-lorry
or morning paper van
no one comes,
for no one will ever leave
the golden city on the fussy train;
and there will be no more waiting
on the hill beside the quiet tree
where the old place falters
because no one comes any more

no one.


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

Lament - Hone Tuwhare

Lament
- Hone Tuwhare

In that strident summer of battle
when cannon grape and ball
tore down the pointed walls
and women snarled as men
and blood boiled in the eyes:
in the proud winter of defeat
he stood unweary
and a god among me.

He it was whom death looked hotly on
whilst I in adoration
brought timid fuel to his fire:
of all things manly he partook

yet did plummet down like a bird
engulfing him as he headlong
rushed towards the night:
the long night
where no dawn wakes to pale
the quaking stars: farewell

Farewell companion of laughter and light
who warmed the nights with the
croaking chants of olden times: hear
me now sing poorly sing harshly...

At dawn's light I looked for you
at the land's end where two oceans froth*
but you had gone without leaving a sign
or a whispered message to the gnarled
tree's feet or the grass or the inscrutable
rock face. Even the innocent day-dreaming
moon could not explain the wind's wry mirth

To you it seems I am nothing -
a nobody and of little worth
whom the disdainful years
neither praise nor decry
but shall abandon to fat
and the vast delight of worms: farewell

Farewell farewell
Let the heavens mumble and stutter
Let them acknowledge your leaving us
Mine is the lone gull's cry in the night
Let my grief hide the moon's face
Let alien gods salute thee
with flashing knives cut open
the dark belly of the sky.

I feel rain spit in my face

I bear no malice, let none stain my valedictions
For I am at one with the wind
the clouds' heave and the slapping rain
the tattered sky and the wild solitude
of the sea and the streaming earth
which I kneel to kiss.





* Referring to Cape Reinga where Maori believe is the place where spirits leave this world on their journey to the next.


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

Burial - Hone Tuwhare

This is probably appropriate right now. Haven't posted because my Grandfather died. Been staying with parents, but am back home now. Hopefully things will return to 'normal' now.




Burial
- Hone Tuwhare

In a splendid sheath
of polished wood and glass
with shiny appurtenances
lay he fitly blue-knuckled
and serene:

hurry rain and trail him
to the bottom of the grave

Flowers beyond budding
will not soften the gravel's
beat of solemn words
and hard sod thudding:

hurry rain and trail him
to the bottom of the grave

Through a broken window
inanely looks he up;
his face glass-gouged and bloodless
his mouth engorging clay
for all the world uncaring...

Cover him quickly, earth!
Let the inexorable seep of rain
finger his greening bones, deftly.


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