​Some of the First Footage


Long years ago 
somewhere in France
the wooden slab gates 
to the factory
are flung open.


Women in white blouses
and dragging skirts
with bird’s nest hairdos
march out 
to left and right.


They know where they are going,
they are going about their business.
They are going home to make soup,
to stir the pot,
or to prove bread.


They are going down to the river to wash,
they are going to the cafe to drink a Calvados,
they are going to settle their bed-ridden mother 
under the goose-feather quilt. 
And, without doubt, 



some of them will whistle up
their gaggle of children from
a neighbour girl, a lame aunt,
or from a hapless husband, never quite
the same since.


They are women who work.
They carry themselves well. 
They do not glance my way. 
And I can tell 
from their flagrant unconcern


for what I might think of them,
that the new-fangled cameraman,
tending his ungainly tripod,
standing where I stand now,
doesn’t figure in their landscape, yet.





Jennifer Compton was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her 11th book of poetry - 'the moment, taken' was published by Recent Work Press. 'Still' is forthcoming.