The New Building – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame! Sorry it's a bit late today folks!


The New Building – Janet Frame

In the new building the voices knock
like stones against the walls.
The partitions are thin.
The new building has a deilicate inner skin
plastered with bookshelves to keep the sound in,
sound or wound. Trees planted in a hurry
droop in the courtyard among level pools
piped with clear water. Beds of grass are beginning
to get the architect’s idea.
Swampy comes and goes
with fist of fog, storm, metallic light gonging
behind those whale-grey heavy clouds
whose blubber’s in the heads of those
who can’t think where the silence, like the money goes,
once it’s out of the soul and into the purse.

Yet I suppose things could be worse.
The hanging stairway in the library may well see
some interesting executions. The inner courtyard
is a surprise worth meeting; even under the leer
of Swampy’s looming face te grass is trying,
the trees may recover,
the windows and the people may grow used to te glare
of the sun’s rude stare;
and by and by
even I may mellow
into a busily writing Burns Fellow!




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