Nick Williamson

Nick Williamson lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. His work has been published in numerous literary journals. His first book of poems, The Whole Forest, was published by Sudden Valley Press in 2001. ‘Broken Light’, from that book, was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2001. In 2005 ‘Learning a Language’ won the New Zealand Poetry Society’s International Poetry Competition.

My father was a hare

I came from the Devil’s seed

born of unnatural relations

between my mother and a jack

rabbit.

The proof is irrefutable,

marked on my face for all to see.

I am a shy animal

not given to burrowing.

On a clear night you might think

you’ll find me in dark patches

on the moon.

But I live down here among you.

In the sixteenth century

a French doctor saw the resemblance

between a hare’s lip

and this strange disfigurement.

These days it is known that a leporid

fathers one child in seven hundred.

It’s hard to fathom why I was chosen.

Chippewa and Navajo are the most

vulnerable. They say the Devil

seldom visits Africa.

Home Movie

That’s me up on the big sheet, wet

sand oozing between my toes.

I can feel the cool

breeze off the sea, the sun

grilling Rangitoto, smell fish

on the bottom

of the boat amidst

tangled lines, blood-stained water.

I’m listening for the dry

crunch of pohutukawa leaves.

That’s my father raising

a silent head out of the blue

haze, slitting soft bellies

of snapper, moist, white.

Now he pours rust-coloured liquid

onto his tongue

waves a gnarled hand at me.

I’m ankle deep in cold

sea, watching.

Bones

These bones remind me of the time you stayed in a hut at Hakatere

Beach and knitted a raw wool jersey for my birthday. Two months

later you shot through to Australia.

Last Easter I drove down to Hakatere Beach. I wondered about you

being there alone when you were only seventeen. The huts were deserted.

The beach was cold and bleak and windswept. I didn’t hang around. I put a

dead shag in a plastic bag and took it home. I buried it in a terracotta pot with

a handful of tiger worms.

This Easter I dug the dead bird up. The feathers and flesh were completely

gone. Only this scatter of bones remained. Sleek, ochre bones; each one quite

beautiful. I washed them in warm water and bleach and here they are in front of me

in a white, plastic icecream  container.

Blue enamel colander

From the doorway

I watched

my mother stand

at the kitchen sink

peeling potatoes.

My father moved up behind

and put his big, hairy arms

around her waist.

She didn’t speak

just kept on peeling

the dirty skin

from the white flesh

her fingers raw

from cold water

above the blue enamel colander.

My father stood close

as if measuring the rise

and fall of his hands

on her belly

until she was done.

Two days later

my sister came

still born

in a rush of blood.

I never saw them

stand like that again.

Uncle Frank

                  

You were  a kindly man

so thin, while Dad was fat.

They said it was the war years

four years in a German camp

after capture on Crete.

Bitter mornings:

so cold it tore the skin

to touch the metal of a truck.

But you were young,

the face less creased.

You look cheerful in uniform.

Later, cigarettes and sherry

got you. They said it was

the war years, four years

in camp.

Repairing the Head

He said he was on the Sickness.

Nerves.

But when my Bantam broke down

he cut a head

gasket out of the back

of a Weetbix pack.

We sat in darkness curtained

against the twentieth century

artefacts in his lounge:

            an ancient outboard

            his sister’s old fridge

            a stuffed red setter.

He worked with scissors squinting

through sellotaped spectacles

fingers engraved with oil.

Afterwards we drank

stout and he talked over

the TV about a ghost

he’d met in my flat

and how he knew Norm Kirk.

Climbing the Flame Tree

The tomatoes are dying.

Dry sores pock their

red sides

frost has crippled

the leaves.

You sit beside me

in thaw sun

stooping to tie

a splintered branch

with strips of Barbara’s

worn out pantyhose.

I notice your fingers

stained from too much

tobacco, the veins

in your hands

bulging like dark

caterpillars.

Across your cheeks

stretch years

of burst capillaries:

purple roads mapping

a bleak landscape.

In another garden

you tipped me laughing

a wispy kid from

a green wheelbarrow.

We climbed a flame

tree to watch the moon

spread like tinfoil

to Rangitoto.

Broken Light

Remember the street light

I broke with a fluke

from my shanghai?

You had me upstairs in a flash

pants round my thin ankles

paddling my raw bum.

I can see the view

from your bedroom window

out over the buffalo

grass where we flew

kites across the broad

grey sea to Tiri Tiri

Whangaparaoa and beyond

before I closed my eyes

to it all and hitched south.

Last night we cast your ashes

on the buffalo hill. Flash

apartments stare out where

once our tall house swayed

through the cold evenings.

New lamps burn in the street.

Colin McCahon

I ran into Colin McCahon

out by the garage.

He was smoking a cigarette.

We talked, Colin and I.

He asked after the wife and kids.

I told him the girlfriend

and I’d been on Banks Peninsula.

His ears pricked up – how the bush

was growing back

and the farmers are all into eco-tourism.

There’s a farmer at Stony Bay, I said.

He’s built five wood cabins

a shower inside a bloody tree

a bath under the blazing

stars.

You light this fire to get it going.

Is that right? Said Colin.

We were on our knees,

his corduroys black with sump oil,

gazing towards those bare hills

on the horizon.

Portrait of Betty Curnow

                          

Betty Curnow hangs

in the gallery

looking a bit stiff.

She’s been in the picture

since nineteen fifty four

when Henderson laid her out

on canvas.

The light fell at such precise

angles in those days

but really she hasn’t changed:

her hair still so severe

pulled back in a bun

her arm forever

lying across that table

with a half-finished fag

between her fingers.

Climb down, Betty,

I want to say. Get out

of that dowdy red frock

untie your hair. Breathe

the warm night air.

This Chair

Made in Poland

the label says

like the shoes

I bought in Norwich

before the accident.

This kitchen chair

has held some special bums:

Jeff, who doesn’t visit now

cos we’re not talking

& Don, who cooed from it

                            I love you

to my wife

& Kate, who sat on it

seventeen years ago

& was never coming back

until today, when she

chose the same chair

& remarked on its beauty.

Insect Poem

Brewing coffee this evening

I came across a poem

on its back

beside the kitchen window.

It was kicking its legs

like a stunned insect.

I picked it up

gently by the wings

laid it out on paper

drinking in its fine markings.

Straight off I could tell

it had no sting

that it wouldn’t make it

through the night

Learning a Language

I have decided

to become a printmaker:

etching

dry point

aquatint.

In the library I found an Illustrated Herbal

bursting with mediaeval plants and ideas.

There’s a man snipping grapes

big purple globes

and his wife is holding out her apron.

1479.

I bought a long needle

with wooden handle

and put a cork on the sharp end.

It came with the green bottle

that last night christened

my resolve.

Made in Portugal, the cork is absolutely right.

Tubes of ink lie heavy

against the soft skin of my palm:

raw umber

burnt sienna

yellow ochre

the blue of the very sky.

I had perspex, clear as an eye,

measured and cut for this moment

alone in my mother’s house

with my needle and my dark ink

learning a language

with my hands.

Notes

Most of my poems are self explanatory. I will provide some notes where I think it may be helpful.

·      Repairing the Head

‘Sickness’ refers to a welfare benefit.

Bantam refers to the motorcycle of that name.

Norman Kirk was elected Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1972. He died in 1974.

·      Climbing the Flame Tree

Rangitoto is an island three miles off the coast of northern New Zealand.

·      Broken Light

Tiri Tiri is an island off the northern New Zealand coast. Whangaparaoa is a peninsula near Tiri Tiri.

·      Colin McCahon

Colin McCahon, who died in 1987, is considered to be New Zealand’s foremost painter. He was noted for his renditions of the New Zealand landscape.

·      Portrait of Betty Curnow
This poem, Portrait of Betty Curnow, was written after viewing a painting of the same name by Louise Henderson at the Christchurch Art Gallery. It was of interest to me because Betty Curnow, wife of the New Zealand poet Allen Curnow, had been a friend of my mother and I had known her when I was a child. Henderson had painted her in 1954, in the cubist style, as a Spanish dancer. I didn't much like the rendition, the way Henderson had 'laid her out on canvas', and I wanted Betty to be able to escape from the painting to be her true self, of which I had a vivid memory.