Hut near desolate pines – Alistair Campbell

Hut near desolate pines – Alistair Campbell

Cobwebs and dust have long
Deadened an old man’s agony.
The choked fireplace, the chair
On its side on the mud floor,
May have warmed an old man’s
Bones or propped them upright
While his great head nodded;
Fantastical images may have stirred
His mind when the wind moaned
And sparks leapt up the chimney
With a roar. But what great gust
Of the imagination threw wide
The door and smashed the lap
And overturned both table and chair…?
A rabbiter found him sprawled
By the door – no violence, nothing
To explain, but the hungry rats
That scurried over the fouled straw.
A foolish lonely old man
With his whiskers matted with dung.
Since when birds have stuffed the chimney
With straw, and a breeze flapped
Continually through the sack window;
And all the wile the deft spiders
Doodled away at their obituaries,
And the thin dust fell from the rafters…
Nothing but cobwebs and dust
Sheeting an old man’s agony




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Now he is dead - Alistair Campbell

Now he is dead - Alistair Campbell

Now he is dead, who talked
Of wild places and skies
Inhabited by the hawk;

Of the hunted hare that flies
Down bare parapets of stone,
And there closes its eyes;

Of trees fast-rooted in stone
Winds bend but cannot break;
Of the low terrible moan

That dead thorn trees make
On a windy desolate knoll;
Of the storm-blackened lake

Where heavy breakers roll
Out of the snow-bred mist,
When the glittering air is cold;

Of the Lion Rock that lifts
Out of the whale-backed waves
Its black sky-battering cliffs;

Of the waterfall that raves
Down the dark mountain side,
And into a white cauldron dives.






O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Parakeet - Keith Sinclair

The Parakeet - Keith Sinclair

Shadows of bars suggest perhaps,
If memory slumbers behind
Those jeweled eyes, eucalypts
Festooned with bark strips, ribboned
With light. But his scream echoes
From farther than Bimberi Peak
Before a word of thought arose
To sing or check the slash of beak.
Clapper in a wire bell, voice
Of a demon in a nun’s dream,
Chiming, enticing, then raucous
With a mad, a mindless glee;
His glaze was baked in a volcanic kiln.
Was his the first loudness to rage
Glittering over a slow, reptilian
Earth? Anachronism caged
He sits, a focus of unease –
As though, a sailor’s pet, he might
Spout blasphemies to greet the visitors.
Perhaps (his own augur) it is not the light
Of past that keeps him spry: he wakes
Us to an instant’s fear that this
May be the sunrise he awaits,
His inheritance of flame, a citrus
Strip in smoking morning, wing-slashed,
And Sydney a screeching desert.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Displacement – Herbert Witheford

The Displacement – Herbert Witheford

How can I look at my unhappiness
As it puts its hand over the side
Of the crumbling old well
And hooks itself up?
I know without opening my eyes
It is ugly,
It is mine.
It is really not unhappiness at all,
Who is to tell what it is?
It is something pressing up toward the light;
I call it ugly but feel only it is obscene,
A native, perhaps beautiful, of the vast deep.


O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Cloud Burst – Herbert Witheford

Cloud Burst – Herbert Witheford

The fuchsia and I seem happy now.
Up from the sun-hard soil the rain is bouncing
And lightning bursts out of the afternoon.
The radio
Crackles with anger much more lively than the dim
Threats of peace-loving statesmen that it drowns.
Closer
Reverberations. Flower-pots overflow.
Even the heart
Has burst it calyx of anxieties;
The spouting
Cascades superbly into two brown shoes
Put carefully – by someone else – out in the yard.
The lightning makes a difference to the room.


O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Cactuses – Herbert Witheford

The Cactuses – Herbert Witheford

It is the orange flower on dark-flushed stem
Or the small spines to guard the so sleek flesh,
Amid dry sand and stone,
That waken an almost malicious love
For the mild cunning of the old creation.
Unblurred by virtue’s or by sin’s delusion
Out of the inert debris of disaster
It rose among the thinning atmosphere.
We cannot emulate. But, as across the aeons
Our later sense accost these presences,
A sting of freshness funs from skull to heel
And, on the palate, sparkling waters fleet.


O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The waters, indeed, are to the palate, bitter – Hubert Witheford

The waters, indeed, are to the palate, bitter – Hubert Witheford

Half my life has passed me by
In my island washed around
By desert seas and void security –
Each year my heart becomes more dry.

Through nerveless fingers life like rice
In slow storm runs to the ground;
Not distance nor insentience provides
Cuirass against that mild fatality.

And slowly, slowly, our life flows
To the proud blaring of the Tramways Band
By postered walls of corrugated iron
And past abominable bungalows.

Slow though that blast, its taste of failure stings
As the salt spray from out the seething waste
Scalds, on the naked headland, human lips.
Let me fathom that sheer taste.



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Elegy in the Orongorongo Valley – Hubert Witheford

Elegy in the Orongorongo Valley – Hubert Witheford

Sundered from this beauty is its fond lover
Who wandered in boredom over far oceans
Again and again remembering, till the day
When decks split in flame and the sea choked him.

Did his despairing salt-water stormed eye-balls
Search, as they broke, for these streams sprawling
Over high places, the mountains of springtime,
Out of the world on a lost morning?

Did death’s lightning show him this shadowed valley
Burning through oceans, green beyond time?
Was this the river he felt closing over
Islands of pain and over his life?

Here and in exile and in last anguish
He found no frenzy to win him this wanton-
In his full failure glistens the wild bush
Too long remembered, too long forgotten.



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A striped shell – Ruth Dallas

A striped shell – Ruth Dallas

Not for us this shell grew like a lily,
Is striped outside and ivory within,
Too many flower-like shells have been washed up
And crushed and scattered on these wild beaches,
Spin and glint along the blowing sand.

A shell must have some shape, but you would think
That any shape would serve, any colour;
And then the way they breakthrough all that seems
Dark and threatening in the sea, as strangely
Easily as snowdrops through dead leaves.

It is the same with every beautiful thing
Perhaps that breaks through darkness or decay,
But here where we walk warily, at times
In places where no man has ever been before,
These things are startling held against the silence.

If it is not a striped and rounded shell
Found unharmed among the sharp rocks or under
Yellow snakes of week, it is a fern
That seems to delicate to touch uncurling
In the gloom of some deep forest glade.

Behind a shell that fills and cups the hand,
Ferns that shine like sunlight through dark trees,
Must lie innumerable shells and ferns
No man has seen, shells like this, and ferns
As delicate as any we have found.

If only one could learn to accept this shell
For what it is; but there is something in
Its shape and colour, something in its breaking
Like a flower from the sea, that makes one
Turn it over in the hand, and over.



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Grandmother and Child – Ruth Dallas

Grandmother and Child – Ruth Dallas

The waves that danced about the rock have gone,
The tide has stolen the rock as time has stolen
The quiet old lady who waited beneath the trees
That moved with a sad sea-sound in the summer wind.

When death was as near as the wind among the leaves,
Troubling the waking fear in the heart of the child
As the wind was troubling the shadows on the sunlit lawn
The grandmother seemed as frail as the frailest leaf.

But she sat so still in the shade of the summer trees
With the wind of death on her cheeks and her folded hands,
Her strength seemed large and cool, as the rock in the sea
Seemed large and cool in the green and restless waves.

As the rock remains in the sea, deep down and strong,
The rock-like strength of the lady beneath the trees
Remains in the mind of the child, more real than death,
To challenge the child’s strength in the hour of fear.


O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Nurse’s song – M. K. Joseph

Nurse’s song – M. K. Joseph

It’s better not to ask, not to deny
But soothe the baby with a lullaby
Nor hint his legacy of grace and grief
Of state and sorrow, bearing and belief.

The palace duties and the palace joys;
The Dauphin howling at his emerald toys
The Infanta in a grape-skin velvet dressed
Low cut to show the glamour of her breast;

The ebony and ivory of the table
In circled candle-light; the hand scarce able
To lift the monstrous amethyst, which afar
Shines to its trembling like a dancing star;

The polished galleries on a summer night
Ablaze like rivers in the thunderous light
(Still and unwinking stood the halberdiers
As the cloaked figure passed with the sound of tears);

The chapel where, by chantry screen, there sings
A youth leading responses to the king’s
Obsequies, whose lineaments he bore.
He sings in sweet soprano evermore



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Have No Fear! – Eileen Duggan

Have No Fear! – Eileen Duggan

In any element, you are scot-free.
Whatever faction triumphs you are safe.
Matching its medium,
What is abeyant
Assumes responsibility.
The switch from gill to lung
To you is nothing.
Behold the complete axolotl!
And should, as some say,
The world end by fire,
You, a salamandrinne,
Would usurp the powers of fable
By wits alone;
If wits could flick up fire
As smooth as breath to nostril,
Your ribs would glow,
Your chest become a brazier –
Of all mankind
The final opportunist!



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Bushfeller – Eileen Duggan

The Bushfeller – Eileen Duggan

Lord, mind your trees today!
My man is out there clearing.
God send the ships fly safe.
My heart is always fearing.

And let the axehead hold!
My dreams are all of felling.
He earns our bread fart back.
And then there is no telling.

If he came onme at nights,
We’d know, but it is only –
We might not even hear –
A man could lie there lonely.

God, let the trunks fall clear,
He did not choose his calling;
He’s young and full of life –
A tree is heavy, falling



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Tides Run Up The Wairau – Eileen Duggan

The Tides Run Up The Wairau – Eileen Duggan

The tides run up the Wairau
That fights against their flow.
My heart and it together
Are running salt and snow.

For though I cannot love you,
Yet, heavy, deep, and far,
Your tide of love comes swining,
Too swift for me to bar.

Some though of you must linger,
A salt of pain in me
For oh what running river
Can stand against the sea?

.
O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Pilgrimage – Eileen Duggan

Pilgrimage – Eileen Duggan

Now are the bells unlimbered from their spires
In every steeple-loft from pole to pole:
The four winds wheel and blow into this gate,
And every wind is wet with carillons.
And two Americas at eagle-height,
The pure, abstracted Himalayan chimes,
Great ghosts of clappers from the Russian fries,
And sweet, wind-sextoned tremblers from Cathay;
The bells of Ireland, jesting all the way,
The English bells, slowbosomed as a swan,
The queenly, weary din of Notre Dame,
And the Low COntries ringing back the sea.
Then Spain, the Moor still moaning through the saint,
The frosty, fiery bells of Germany,
And on before them, baying, sweeping down,
The heavy, joyful pack of thunder-jowls
That tongue hosannas from the leash of Rome –
All float untethered over Jaffa Gate
To fling one peal when the angels cheat the stone.
But if one little gaping country bell,
Blown from its weather-boarding in the south,
Should be too lost to keep its covenant,
Or lift is heart and reins up to the hour,
Know that its dumbness riots more than sound.



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Booty - Eileen Duggan

Booty - Eileen Duggan

Ah not as plains that spread into us slowly
But as that mountain flinging at the skies
And not as merchantmen which trundle in the offing
But as a privateer that boards a prize,
Let song come always at me and not to me
And, coming, let it plunder, burn, and flay,
For beauty like heaven by violence is taken
And the violent shall bear it away.



O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A woman shopping – Denis Glover

A woman shopping – Denis Glover

Beauty goes into the butcher’s shop
Where blood taints the air;
The chopper comes down on the block
And she pats her hair.

Death’s gallery hangs ready
Naked of hair and hide,
But she has clothes on her body
And a heart inside.

What’s death to the lady, pray?
Even shopping’s a bore.
- The carcasses gently sway
As she goes out the door.

But death goes with her on the way:
In her basket along the street
Rolls heavily against her thigh
The blood-red bud of the meat.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Hotere* - Hone Tuwhare

This is the poem that inspired me to write my own poem which I put to music and ended up winning in a composition competition. Every time I see my keyboard I think of this poem


Hotere*
- Hone Tuwhare

When you offer only three
vertical lines precisely drawn
and set into a dark pool of lacquer
it is a visual kind of starvation:

and even though my eyeballs
roll up and over to peer inside
myself, when I reach the beginning
of your eternity I say instead: hell
let’s have another feed of mussels

Like, I have to think about it, man.

When you stack horizontal lines
into vertical columns which appear
to advance, recede, shimmer and wave
like exploding packs of cards
I merely grunt and say: well, if it
is not a famine, it’s a feast

I have to roll another smoke, man

But when you score a superb orange
circle on a purple thought-base
I shake my head and say: hell, what
is this thing called aroha

Like, I’m euchred, man. I’m eclipsed?




* Ralph Hotere is a NZ artist

http://www.honetuwhare.co.nz/poems.php

Toroa ~ Albatross - Hone Tuwhare

Toroa ~ Albatross
- Hone Tuwhare

Day and night endlessly you have flown effortless of wing
over chest-expanding oceans far from land.
Do you switch on an automatic pilot, close your eyes
in sleep, Toroa?

On your way to your homeground at Otakou Heads
you tried to rest briefly on the Wai-te-mata
but were shot at by ignorant people. Crippled.
You found a resting place at Whanga-nui-a-Tara;
found space at last to recompose yourself.

Now, without skin and flesh to hold you together
the division of your aerodynamic parts lies whitening,
licked clean by sun and air and water. Children will
discover narrow corridors of airiness between,
the suddenness of bulk. Naked, laugh in the gush
and ripple — the play of light on water.

You are not alone, Toroa. A taniwha once tried
to break out of the harbour for the open sea. He failed.
He is lonely. From the top of the mountain nearby he
calls to you: Haeremai, haeremai, welcome home, traveller.

Your head tilts, your eyes open to the world.



http://www.honetuwhare.co.nz/poems.php

To a Mäori figure cast in bronze outside the Chief Post Office, Auckland - Hone Tuwhare

To a Mäori figure cast in bronze
outside the Chief Post Office, Auckland
- Hone Tuwhare


I hate being stuck up here, glaciated, hard all over
and with my guts removed: my old lady is not going
to like it

I’ve seen more efficient scarecrows in seedbed
nurseries. Hell, I can’t even shoo the pigeons off

Me: all hollow inside with longing for the marae on
the cliff at Kohimarama, where you can watch the ships
come in curling their white moustaches

Why didn’t they stick me next to Mickey Savage?
‘Now then,’ he was a good bloke
Maybe it was a Tory City Council that put me here

They never consulted me about naming the square
It’s a wonder they never called it: Hori-in-gorge-atbottom-
of-hill. Because it is like that: a gorge,
with the sun blocked out, the wind whistling around
your balls (your balls mate) And at night, how I
feel for the beatle-girls with their long-haired
boyfriends licking their frozen finger-chippy lips
hopefully. And me again beetling

my tent eyebrows forever, like a brass monkey with
real worries: I mean, how the hell can you welcome
the Overseas Dollar, if you can’t open your mouth
to poke your tongue out, eh?

If I could only move from this bloody pedestal I’d
show the long-hairs how to knock out a tune on the
souped-up guitar, my mere quivering, my taiaha held
at the high port. And I’d fix the ripe kotiro too
with their mini-piupiu-ed bums twinkling: yeah!

Somebody give me a drink: I can’t stand it


http://www.honetuwhare.co.nz/poems.php

Friend - Hone Tuwhare

Friend

Do you remember
that wild stretch of land
with the lone tree guarding the point
from the sharp-tongued sea?

The fort we built out of branches
wrenched from the tree
is dead wood now.
The air that was thick with the whirr of
toetoe spear succumbs at last to the grey gull's wheel.

Oyster-studded roots
of the mangrove yield no finer feast
of silver-bellied eels, and sea-snails
cooked in a rusty can.

Allow me to mend the broken ends
of shared days:
but I wanted to say
that the tree we climbed
that gave food and drink
to youthful dreams, is no more.
Pursed to the lips her fine-edged
leaves made whistle - now stamp
no silken tracery on the cracked
clay floor.

Friend,
in this drear
dreamless time I clasp
your hand if only to reassure
that all our jewelled fantasies were
real and wore splendid rags.

Perhaps the tree
will strike fresh roots again:
give soothing shade to a hurt and
troubled world.


http://honetuwhare.org.nz/

Papatuanuku - Hone Tuwhare

PAPA-TU-A-NUKU
(Earth Mother)

We are stroking, caressing the spine
of the land.

We are massaging the ricked
back of the land

With our sore but ever-loving feet.
Hell, she loves it!

Squirming, the land wriggles
in delight.

We love her.



http://honetuwhare.org.nz/hone-tuwhare-charitable-trust/