Once – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame!

Once – Janet Frame

Once the warm draught of people
flowing under the locked door that held me from them
changed my flame, played
influence on my shadow,
burned and re-burned me where I made
my tablets of wax in the dark.

Then beyond the door all was still.
Thief blackbird stopped up the keyhole
where birdbeaks of light, comforting, had pecked crumbs through.
A winter I could never know
sealed the cracks with an evil they called snow.
It was so pure, falling
from nowhere, its flakes blinding.

Beyond the door all was still.
Cleaned in my lonely ritual.



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