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.