Poem 522
This is from a play for voices written for radio … it’s based on a story I became aware of and the narrative unfolds in between the poems through an old man making a statement to police after a tragedy … this lonely widower has become close to a neighbouring family in their rural valley but becomes increasingly aware of stresses within the marriage … the father of the family has an irrational fear that the wind will blow his house down, a phobia that we quickly realise is a metaphor for his real terror of his wife escaping his control and finding a life of her own outside the house … when he decides they need to sell up and move ’somewhere the wind doesn’t blow’ his wife for the first time digs her heels in … as in all Greek tragedies the father’s attempts to avert disaster only push him closer to it when his wife begins an affair with the real estate agent … obsessional hysterical and delusional the father nevertheless intuits that his wife is involved with another man and becomes gripped by the idea that she has passed venereal disease to him … when his wife finally makes the break to leave him the father shoots the estate agent and attempts to kill her as well … their seventeen year old son saves his mother’s life by shooting his father dead leading to inevitable publicity and a court case … we are left with the uncomfortable feeling that the story is a cyclic one and no one in this family can truly escape it …
… the challenge here was to inhabit each character’s point of view and augment the old man’s prosaic account of events with the internal emotional and poetic voices of the key players … for some reason Radio NZ (in the 80s) didn’t think this disturbing tale of sex murder and mayhem was quite for their audience …
… I’ve only given you the poems here which in the entire script are framed by the lengthy police report the well meaning old man gives who has been caught in the middle of all this and relates the story in a rural NZ argot that contrasts effectively with the poetic mode … there are also great opportunities for soundscape and fx throughout …
Where The Wind Doesn’t Blow
(i) The Father
Three o'clock
I hear it
and am awake
the tide coming in
through the poplars
the wind returning
stooping down to earth
fiddling at everything
shaking
prising at my roof
tearing away like the top off a cardboard box
opening up
so it can see me
scrabbling and running like an insect ahead of the boot
can't she hear it?
I sweat it down
but jerk on every gust
like a fish on the hook
pulled up
to the dirty probing fingers
wind
shoving under the eaves
roof flapping like a mouth
wide open
wanting to shout us all out
to scatter us all out
to split
to scatter
what did she do today?
to town
to class
to others
she runs to others
and won't raise a finger
to stop it
the change
the scattering
the roof panting up and down
pulling like a possum at the leg
bitten halfway through
pants leg halfway on in the dark
panicking fumbling
she won't get up
see the wind pouring
lifting
straining
trees streaming and tearing
like paper the whole house twisting
distorting
thrashed and shaken like a tree
the shouting voice that makes me tiny
scratching at the keys I jam at the car
kneeling screaming for directions
to crawl in and drive
somewhere the wind doesn't blow
(ii) The Father
It was like she took a trip by bus
for nine months
she got on the day she said
she was pregnant with him
and then she went further and further away
until when she had him
it was if she'd got where she was going
and she got off
and set up sticks
in a different country
I mean whatever I was meant to
I didn't feel
she left me for her babies
that's all
I did my bit with the house
whatever
a man looks after his own
shagged myself out
every day after work to put it up
but it was solid
four times specifications
based straight into the concrete
he'd started to walk
by the time we moved in
I had to build a fence
to pen him
while I put in the lawn
the place was fine
at the finish
nobody could bloody say a thing
(iii) The Mother
I want to stay
now
funny
that it's here
I want to make some kind of a stand
this dark-early valley
and a couple of acres
full of stones
but the house is warm
faces morning
a flash of sea between the hills
and we moved too much
in the early days
never allowing me a home
never allowing me
anything
and I know the wind
blows everywhere
and for me least good
now
standing to lose the friends
I finally made
that he doesn't like
that
he's never met
and then
the girls
their exams
their friends
the 'better chance than I had'
which is really so slim
so unlikely
and that I'll never step back from
a feeling that this is the last
of something
but still can be settled for
the lawyer's voice
speaks to that
and the time spent here
against it all
I stretch in the mornings
like I'll never stop
(iv) The Son
The closest we ever got
if you could call it that
was shooting the birds
he thought it was useful
on the weekends throwing bread out
and leaving me the slug gun
five cents a sparrow thrush blackbird
that ate the grass seed
and more for a magpie
who were cheeky buggers
(he was mad
even then)
and every day I'd do it
hiding down behind the water tank
waiting
knowing that part of it
was just to stop me
following him around
and then at night
he'd ask me how many birds I'd killed
and weekend by weekend
I lied more
until the night he said
show me
got me out with the torch
looking
and then the belt came off
and I didn't say
I didn't do it for the money
what was the point?
why else would I have done it?
(v) The Agent
Saw her as I was starting up the drive
down under the trees
feeding the calves
clumsy I still hadn't thought
of an excuse to be there
but I stopped the car
and walked over
and in the end she never asked me
what I'd come for
(and I suppose that
means something
looking back)
we just talked
wandering pent up talk
made jerky with the fear
of nothing happening
but then
we got round to it
and it was alright
and she said he
was coming home soon
but tomorrow
tomorrow was a good day
come back tomorrow
and we kissed
again
feeling how excited
I was
and she was
and trying not to show it
like kids at a dance
and then
leaving
don't forget she said
when I was ten feet away
already disbelieving
turning to make it real again
and I said no chance
feeling not like some
shit hot lover
but something
all the same
(vi) The Mother
I changed things
this one time I didn't let
slip past
or pretend I didn't know what it meant
when he looked at me
when he talked to me
when he visited me
and it was me
he visited
with all those thin excuses about the selling of the house
like a boy late for school
I told him the first time he came
that there would be no sale
and I saw the expression on his face
that he liked a determined woman
one who knew her own mind
and I liked being determined
I liked to finally
know my own mind
he wanted to sleep with me
he tried to garble that out
one morning over coffee
but before he could finish
I took his hand
and took him to bed
simply because my own mind
full of the sun on the table
and the steaming cups
said I should
(vii) The Father
I've got it
dripping
and burning
got it from her
she's gone sniffing around
like a rat
I know I've got it
all these doctors try and fob me off
these waiting rooms
kids snivelling
clocks ticking
dripping
and burning
my life
who is it
that's pumped me full of pox
which bastard
which rat
yellow teeth like clothes pegs
I can lay poison with the best of them
draw it out in the open
finish it with my boot
just tell me who
a man takes care of his own
or he's no man
just tell me who
I've had it with her lying
lying there
running like water underneath me
like the dirty seepage
the dribble from the outlet pipe
sheltered side of the beach
dripping
and burning
her
wanting this
that
town
class
all the time running pox
all the time lying cuddled
in against the wind
not caring
when the roof rips clear
spinning
cutting my bloody head off
(viii) The Son
So they want me to stand up
to tell it all again
and by holding
nothing back
win my freedom
the sympathy of this goggle eyed court
that sits its backside
on my life
I want no one's good opinion
for me
for my mother
or my sisters
the man of the house now is me
and I want to spit at all these
who think they have reasons
who think they can expect
to hear me make myself nothing
because I'm supposed to hope for their favour
but I will be quiet for now
there's bound to be someone to swear
I was always a quiet boy
things will be different after
after my mother has risen tearful to speak
to answer all their questions
to tell about him
about the other one
about her screwing
and all for me
then my sisters dragged in to follow
with corroboration
we're tearing open
one by one
through the box
I want to scream
the wicked witch is dead
dead
and still the house isn't settled
(ix)
The Old Man
When he stepped into the house
and it was empty
he went mad
that house we've put him in now
that empty house
will crush him
he rages himself away to nothing
inside its walls
the wind can't reach him there
now nothing reaches him
the old goes off
and the new begins
The Mother
He thought he could keep us here
inside his arm
his hammer
his concrete
and keep the world outside
there was never enough
in these walls for that
now
I will clean everything
paint everything
open doors
so I can feel the breeze come in
as the old goes off
the new begins
The Son
I can easily imagine his voice
in the wind
I go out and laugh into it
I'm not afraid of that
or anything
if something needs to be done
I do it
I can look after my own
I've proved it
I proved it to him
now the old goes off
and the new begins