Janet Kenny
left an idyllic life as a painter and singer in New Zealand to sing professionally in England then escaped to Sydney, Australia, where she was active in the anti-nuclear-weapons movement and jointly wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry.
She has published poems in print and many online journals including Mi Poesias, The New Formalist, Avatar, The Susquehanna Quarterly, The Shit Creek Review, The Raintown Review, and Iambs & Trochees. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and is included in the international anthology The Book of Hope, and shared an anthology of bird poetry with the American poet Jerry H. Jenkins. She has just illustrated a forthcoming book of poems, The Bad Habits of Little Boys, by the Irish poet Jim Hayes.
She now lives in Queensland with her husband of many years and looks back with astonishment.
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Ten Netsukes for an Old New Zealand Lady
i
Old people are
self-contained like
netsukes, arms around
memories. They know the
value of despised things in
their loneliness for vanished
certainties. Old silvered wooden
fences, earth smell of a garden,
familiar shoes shaped like a loved
foot, music no longer respected,
paintings, no longer admired,
food no longer fashionable,
old herbs and trellises of
beans in back yards
with parsley.
ii
Grass fresh mown
by hand and sweat,
polished tables and
scrubbed benches,
baking dish soaked
to wash tomorrow,
cruet on table, salt
with everything,
always a pudding.
Wireless and a book
after lunch on
Sundays or a drive
snail’s pace to see
the cherry blossoms
and stare at others
doing the same.
iii
Remember that
woman who lived
with a husband, not hers?
I saw her in the butcher’s and
she wasn’t wearing a ring.
Something about her, you
can always tell, the walk
that gives ‘them’
away.
iv
My father
knew the Latin names
of plants. I like a nice show
in the garden. Bitter wind kills
everything but sweet-william
and hydrangeas, dahlias grow
well, I remember the kowhai
bushes heavy with tuis in
Hawke’s Bay when I
was young. All day
on knees weeding
and remembering.
v
My long auburn
plaits made Maori
children touch them
and once fetching water
at the well my uncle said
I was the image of his
Eileen when they were
courting. I never feel
beautiful now.
Never.
vi
Baking is
expected and
pastries, cakes,
pikelets and scones
are the duty of
respectable
housewives.
Mine,
though I say it myself,
are better
than my mother’s.
Such a shame
they are
eaten.
vii
My little
brother was
shot by a sniper in
Florence.
My true baby
and nothing seems
worth while since
I knew he would
never return. Shot
the last day of the war.
How can I grieve with
this family who are
town people, so
different from
country, and
were not in
my childhood?
viii
I am bitter
with disappointment.
War and money are all
there is. My daughter is
foreign. She’s like her, my
mother-in-law, that old cat
ruined my life with her
condescension, his
sister, school-marm,
gave her ideas.
I want her to marry
a doctor and have a
normal life.
ix
Country skills
un-needed lose value
in towns and needed skills
are absent. Conversation
about...about what? What
are they saying? Politics
that would shock Father.
Unions! And the drink!
Always. Money down
the drain. People!
Och people!
x
My son’s wife
wouldn’t have me
in her house.
We planned
to buy a big house to
share. She smiles,
but
I know it was her,
not him.
We looked at houses
together. She liked
the wrong houses.
I couldn’t live with
his mother, but
that was different.
So here I am
alone with
town people.
Alone.
 Author Note: My interest in sculpture drew me to the fetal shapes of Japanese carved netsukes which remind New Zealanders of Maori greenstone Tikis. They are often powerful sculptures despite their minute proportions. Italians say that people like my late mother are molto chiuso (very closed). My mother’s life was disciplined and contained. Her unexpressed anger and pride made me think of the similar tensions which lurk beneath the calm resolved forms of the best Japanese netsukes. You could say this is a love poem to my mother.
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