A Pair of Sandals - James K. Baxter

A pair of sandals, old black pants
And leather coat — I must go, my friends,
Into the dark, the cold, the first beginning
Where the ribs of the ancestor are the rafters
Of a meeting house — windows broken
And the floor white with bird dung — in there
The ghosts gather who will instruct me
And when the river fog rises
Te ra rite tonu te Atua —
The sun who is like the Lord
Will warm my bones, and his arrows
Will pierce to the centre of the shapeless clay of the mind.
                                                                                                Hemi.


Sharpe, I. (Ed.). (2001, January 1). Best New Zealand Poems 2001. Retrieved from http://www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters/bnzp/2001/home.html