As I walked along the street – Janet Frame

January is Janet Frame Month


As I walked along the street – Janet Frame

As I walked along the street I heard
a transistor radio singing like a bird,
an advertisement for 4ZB
singing in the cherry tree.

I said, So high, so far away
you sing in the push-button sky.
Have you a message of faith and hope?
It said – Use Lily-Clean Soap.

And I was angry then and tried
to forget the transistor bird
but its voice came loud in the world so green
- With Hexachlorophene.

Then I smote the bird and I smote the tree
and the push-button sky fell down on me,
and dying I lay alone without hope
or faith or Lily-Clean Soap.


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