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| ELLINGTON again slaps the face with wind So well remembered; and now the mind Leaps; all sea, all tossed hills, all whiteEdged air poured in tides over the tight Town. Bleached bones of houses are hard To distinguish, at some distance, from a graveyard. UT do not consider death; we have tucked Too snugly into the valleys; we have mucked With the rake of time over the taméd Foreshore. Battering trams; Lambton, lamed With concrete, has only a hint of ghost waters On the Quay stranded among elevators. HERE is no need to remember swamp-grass, Or how the first women (let the rain pass, They had prayed) wept when the hills reared up Through the mist, and they were trapped Between sea and cliffed forest. _No ship could be More prisoning than the grey beach at Petone. O need to consider (here where we have shut The tiger tight behind iron and concrete) How we might yet drown deep under the wind; And the wind die too; and an insect find (Columbus of his day) the little graveyard town
eet in a still landscape like porcelain,
Paul
Henderson
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 521, 17 June 1949, Page 11
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190RETURN JOURNEY New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 521, 17 June 1949, Page 11
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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