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.