The Coming

Te Ao Hou, June 1967, Page 6

The Coming The Man Nameless His wife Together At the prow Of mighty Tainui Agony drew me to my feet To fall again And round me Noise Women— Odd black shapes Bent in unison And from their lips The death-wail Aieee!! I bite my lips To force the cry back Why should I keen with these? I know not Death? Yet death is here The babe is dead How cold to hold Him How small He does not weep He lies On my heart Growing Chill He has left me I would Cry Now But I cannot Cry Cold wind surged round me Salt spray slashed my face And I knew I had not eaten for days Marama—white and aloof She and Moana laughed At we who toiled Incessantly To cross that heaving breast Hau drove us on Pitying us — Yet we wanted Not pity — But food. I am here In this world Haunt me not The eyes Reach ‘Aotearoa’ A sob — or a sigh A new land Of cloud And my eyes Dimming And my arms Giving In gratitude And in anguish He is so small My son For a new world My Soul (To the oars) Free (Pull) The keening Gone— The despair The cold I (Tahi) We (Rua) Am (Toro) Are (Wha) Here. (Hei) Dinah Moengarangi Rawiri From her elders, the writer heard the story of the coming of Tainui, of the death and the casting into the sea of the captain's son, as a sacrifice to the ocean-goddess, Moana, for bringing the canoe to a safe haven. There has always been doubt as to whether the child was alive or dead when he was cast into the sea. His sacrifice drove his mother mad. The poem is the mother's, and the bracketed words are part of the chorus from the ghosts of the past. Though she thinks she is free, yet they haunt her, and their triumphant chorus calls in her ear to the very last.