POEMS OF PLACE
2018 -2023
CHOGM IN SAMOA
A purple dawn, smoke over the reef. They look down, they look up
Wandering as if in a dream, lost in the galaxy of Oceania
Lugubrious in the low dark sea, grey on grey, then slow
Interminable grey in grey, the watchers on the reef who bring
Sailors to our seas, our waves, our thick black rock beach.
Are we proud, respectful? When another comes and then
Another and still more, and then a faraway king arrives, three hundred thousand
Vriesias in blue and yellow tyres, painted blue and yellow,
In hand-painted rocks and husks, prepped by kids under
A turbulent sky, black geckos watching the watchers.
Leaves sprouting from painted coconuts on the top of sticks, trees
Growing on the top of sticks, and flags of the family, the family
Of nations all along the cross-island road flapping in south-easterly
Trade winds moving through fale upon fale, dancing under lights on the oblong floor:
What colour should the road rock be? What can you take to the king that is cool?
This is cool: An umu in a thatched villa, tuna, coconut cream, wrapped in banana leaves
And then in breadfruit leaves, and sewn into a ball to place
Among the red-hot river stones. Matai flicks his eyes at you, talofa, then
Back to search the wide horizon for a sign, a big heart. This is cool: King
Charles if you love me, which I know you do, why don’t you just make it right?
But Sanora is not Treetops and I am not your Dad. I give myself to two palagi only
You and Jesus (maybe Mary at a pinch). I open my three hearts to you.
Please show me your manawanui, let it spread like oil
Across the reefs of my horizon where the ancestors fished. Come
Swim with the turtles Charles, swim with me. Charles your navy
Is spreading its love along our shores. A white ghost wafts above
The water through the palms. Here, then gone, light lifts off tart green
Leaves of heliconia and in the deep shade softens its glow.
The ghost moves on. For so long it’s kept the catastrophe at bay
But now the sheer live pane of water sends up sparks across our feet.
When we finally come up for air we glimpse the shadow on the sealine
Where the ship went down. A plume of oil puffs though the little waves
That heave it slowly, gently on the beach where we wait and watch
The small sea creatures float. You point and say so sad, it seems
To be gasping for breath. Tossed up on the beach it has no colour now.
COLD WAR: Ihumātao
After the kawakawa tea, cockles and bright smiles
Some sort of explanation is necessary, I feel it
But your hand gestures slow down, not too fast
Birds are rising over the bay and the old ones are weeping now.
We wait.
Finally the sky cracks and rain pours through
Straight down on boats leaving the farther shore.
Returning, we felt at first to us, but
Now we watch them turning out to sea. It’s grey, and cold.
I wait.
They are getting it. You, perhaps not. Least not yet.
At any rate the kuia’s look killed
The moment, and the whole sad business had
To begin again. It’s your turn, too. We all know now.
You wait.
CORRESPONDENCES
I was in the Fragonard Room at the Frick
Looking at an obese baby floating in the sky
Above a garden. Opening my phone to check the provenance
I saw a photograph of the pou at Maketu marae
Along the beach from my house -
A figure floating in the sky above the waves – and wondered
If the two were really that much different, when
A young woman approached me and asked if I had seen her child.
Sunbeam on old oak. It is the right way
You are in; keep in it. I point my finger at a book of poems in the church,
I said check out the voices of the dead, they speak.
You clicked diamonds on the floor.
We’d turned off the A4 after four
And walked across the fields beside the hay
Neither to verify, nor instruct, inform, report, nor pray.
Little Gidding is bitter-sweet.
CORTONA
Under red vines curling in heat and must,
Water, caught behind the stone, forces moss into cracks
Oh it’s not that serious … is it?
We walked and talked
Our hands not touching, like electric eels
In the dusk.
What if there were no outcome? No
Result, no resolution, no
Finitude, what if the leaves moved
Their shapes through the night slowly
Into contours that, technically speaking,
Reformed their wet infrastructures
Into hipped, pliant categories
That some might - you? - call invalid
Or surreal, or redundant in
A mystical way, only to be chopped
Like salami in a guillotine and fall
Around our heads as imperfect crisp shapes?
What then?
You might bend and caress one,
Turning to speak, reply to my crack
Calling my bluff, telling me off, gently,
Expertly, bringing me to land.
IL PROFESSORE
His rooms are well-ordered and spacious
According to an invisible grid
Rectangles, circles, squares
Tables, side-tables, glass cases.
A carpet would be too soft, resilient, absorbent -
That’s his role, to animate the vitrine: short
Shorts, Italian sandals, a T-shirt with horizontal
Stripes, “optics” his friends like. They’re never bored.
Glass cups for the tea, a Japanese designer,
New buildings in the city, his last drawing
Finally framed and on the wall. Well-modulated,
somewhat finer,
Unhurried, the voices know where they are going
And have
All the time in the world to get there. It’s not a very
Long way.
Grapes and crackers are passed.
RIVER ROAD
I asked him how light it was and he said well
My father had it for six years no probs
Could launch and load it by
Himself, but now he’s seventy-six.
There was someone inside, a shade
A lifting fall of sheer
Light, turning away to the wall
Another guy came out and shook
My hand, Ben he said,
Yeah, she’s hard all right.
While down the back behind
The shed the river pulled.
He comes out with me now
Straight up to the mussel beds then back.
Only takes an hour to get a feed.
Just take what we need.
She shifted on the bed again
Looked back and then away,
Well Joe, I’ll have a think and text
You in the morning.
Drove up the river road and gone.
SIMPLIFICATION
Was it the wind?
From a distance, some other place,
Above the roar of the hills, the waves, the mad gulls,
Above the whispers of people whose logs burn
In the morning before the mist lifts,
The quiet turn?
A slim tide spreads its silt across thick flats
The children, barely nine or ten, look up
When a truck changes gear, “Who’s that?”
Not someone we know, and turn back
To the mud, the oyster shells.
Nothing matters, it’s just wind and trees again,
Flat waters, fog and yellow hills, a thin hand on a rock
Not a change, not even a strange
Tone of voice, a wisp of thought, a vein of talk.
More of the same, then, far breakers,
Flocks of Canada geese, black swans, rain.
NEIGHBORHOOD
Overcoats and beanies float through blocks of space
Divided by tree trunks and canopies that press
“Folks” through the thickened plane of light at end of day
The light that humans share with mammals, arthropods,
Letterboxes and household gods wheeled into place.
We’re OK they seem to say – not to each other
But to those who trace the evening grid,
Not moths or Abyssinians or urban foxes
But one pink-red face and then another,
Two or three under-fives whose mother hid
Behind a black-hatted witch snow-person
Disarmed among red leaves caught in the secret drift
Passed by walkers craning for the bus.
Soft and ambient this place, where twilight homes
Radiate a plump indifference to us
An inwardness we catch, a quiet, instant distrust.