Graduate – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame

Graduate – Janet Frame

She lives in letters. She knows
the quote, the plot that suits,
the words that fir the moment
as fox gloves fit the fleeing fox
with golden brush and speckled poison
described by him and him and her. Squalid borrower
who dreams another’s life, who lives
not under the sun but flat between
another’s pages as the useful bookmark, the fringed self-centre.

Still she wait for the surprising pool
where nothing grows, no fish have swum before,
no reed or weed has stirred – a hopeless dream
for already
- “the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing.”




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