Houses

A couple of years ago, the house where my mother was born (1905) was moved from its site in New Plymouth to make way for an extension to the Taranaki Hospice. It has now been set up on a section near Lepperton, where my uncle taught in the early 1930s. Among his pupils, and friends of his two daughters, were Margaret's mother and her sisters.



Here is the poem I wrote when the house was being moved:

Houses

Ripping it off – they are ripping it off

The house off its land

Wrenching it away out of

Its resting place

A hundred years it stood here

My mother’s birthplace

And now they are taking it away

To a strange corner

Somewhere foreign, unfamiliar

Where it will be lonely and sad

Houses are like clothes

We wear them because of what they say

About us and for us

For the messages they tell the world.

“I am me. Look at me

You are not looking at me

Stop thinking about yourself

Stop thinking about them

Look at me!”

“I am so pretty – prettier than all the others

Across the street

Look I’m the only one left here!”

My mother’s house was clean and white

Bright in the sun

I remember several others

Similar in style

Around it from the original subdivision

Called “Soleville”

In David Street

After David Sole

Who owned the land.

She was happy in this house

Had photos of it with her and her brother

And their friends playing

With a hobby-horse

Her long hair

Reaching down to her waist.

She always had happy memories of this house

And eating whitebait in the Spring

And the steamer journey back to the north.

How do we wear our house?

Now that it will no longer be

Bright coloured inside and out.

How do you wear these modern shades

That seem to say nothing at all?

“Excuse me

Pardon me for interrupting

But would you glance at me

Once in a while?”

“I am trying to be demure

And well-mannered,

Can’t you tell?

I don’t want to shout

Or wave my arms

But you are not looking at me.”

My mother’s house is wrecked,

Wracked, recked, rocked

Ricked, racked……

Soon unrecked, with a modern

Blank-walled, colourless box

Set fleetingly in its cosy site.

Like clothes they keep us warm

And safe

Protect us from embarrassment

Define our limits,

Ration our sunshine

And our breeze,

And connect us to the earth.

Those old bright colours were like

Little children, loud and showy

But the modern shades are

Like teenagers: all shyness

And embarrassment and monosyllabic.

When will houses grow up and find

Something suitable to wear in old age?

Why should my mother’s house be wrecked?

The house I began life in is

Still standing well-kept and solid after 80 years – in Auckland

The house my father grew up in is

As good-looking as it ever was

After 120 years – in Auckland

The house my grandfather started off in

Is still there, doubled in size,

After 150 years – in Auckland

But in New Plymouth we

Toss houses aside like waste paper.

In this age of retrofitting

We should be able to keep them alive

Relive the memories they hold

Teach our children

The stories they sing

Why must my mother’s house

Be cast into despair and depression

Neglected and lonely

When it has stood happily

Amongst its neighbours

For a happy hundred years?

Houses can be happy

When a family

Knocks together inside.

Even one person and a house

Can make a happy couple

Better still, two people in a house

Trying to work around each other

Trying to make room

Rubbing off their sharp edges

Becoming real

After all these years

Sitting down after the day’s striving

 To breathe with the house

And each other

“Your only security/happiness

Is the breath you have just taken – together”