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Home>>Poetry>>Poetry Collections>>The Book of My Enemy>>Recent Verse>>Occupation: Housewife

Occupation: Housewife

Picture

Advertisements asked "Which twin has the Toni?"
Our mothers were supposed to be non-plussed.
Dense paragraphs of technical baloney
Explained the close resemblance of the phoney
To the Expensive Perm. It worked on trust.

The barber tried to tell me the same sheila
With the same Expensive Perm was pictured twice.
He said the Toni treatment was paint-sealer
Re-bottled by a second-hand car dealer
And did to hair what strychnine did to mice.

Our mothers all survived, but not the perms.
Two hours at most the Toni bobbed and dazzled
Before the waves were back on level terms,
Limp as the spear-points of the household germs
An avalanche of Vim left looking frazzled.

Another false economy, home brew
Seethed after nightfall in the laundry copper.
Bought on the sly, the hops were left to stew
Into a mulch that grunted as it grew.
You had to sample it with an eye-dropper,
 
Not stir it with a stick as one mum did.
She piled housebricks on top, thinking the gas
Would have nowhere to go. Lucky she hid
Inside the house. The copper blew its lid
Like Krakatoa to emit a mass

Of foam. The laundry window bulged and broke.
The prodigy invaded the back yard.
Spreading across the lawn like evil smoke
It murdered her hydrangeas at a stroke
And long before the dawn it had set hard.

On a world scale, one hardly needs to note,
Those Aussie battlers barely had a taste
Of deprivation. Reeling from the boat
Came reffo women who had eaten goat
Only on feast days. Still, it is the waste

I think of, the long years without our men,
And only the Yanks to offer luxuries
At a price no decent woman thought of then
As one she could afford, waiting for when
The Man Himself came back from Overseas.

And then I think of those whose men did not:
My mother one of them. She who had kept
Herself for him for so long, and for what?
To creep, when I had splinters, to my cot
With tweezers and a needle while I slept?

Now comes the time I fly to sit with her
Where she lies waiting, to what end we know.
We trade our stories of the way things were,
The home brew and the perm like rabbit fur.
How sad, she says, the heart is last to go.

The heart, the heart. I still can hear it break.
She asked for nothing except his return.
To pay so great a debt, what does it take?
My books, degrees, the money that I make?
Proud of a son who never seems to learn,

​She can't forget I lost my good pen-knife.
Those memories of waste do not grow dim
When you, for Occupation, write: Housewife.
Out of this world, God grant them both the life
She gave me and I had instead of him.

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  • Home
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    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk