Three Poems

Te Ao Hou, December 1967, Page 45

Three Poems by Dinah Moengarangi Rawiri Taheke They carried her to Taupiri Amid the sighing of the green ferns And the sound of the Kotuku Winging its way to the sun. Go then with the Kotuku Mother of my Mother Listen not to our weeping Let it carry you in pride For even Mother Papa sobs beneath our feet For you, Who have known her … And loved … She was very old Mother of my Mother Quiet, firm, and sure The moko on her face Proclaiming her right and her birth To all those who could read I am glad that she died now, Before the quietness withered, The resolve shook And the surety trembled. ‘Ah Ruru, brown one, I sit here, among the pillars Of the temple of Tane And hear you call softly in the darkness. I do understand, brown one.’ With her passing Has passed the lands of my ancestors And the old proud age of my people. I am glad that she died now Before she too was engulfed by the storm of a later tide, Before she too was shattered, By the tumultous tide of a new, and paler, sea.

Bethells My ancestors named you A name I have long since Forgotten And yet I shall not forget Your non-calm Your primitive anger And your twisted seas. The edge of the world Semi-circled, haunted By the ghosts of my ancestors And the still faces of a thousand dead, Turning, Ever turning, And swallowed again Within your green-black troughs And heavy Mountain heavy Seas. Primordial, ancient Sand, iron-grey, Tussock, Bleaknesses … Glooming shadowed caves Thundering, deafening Green-black walls Of water And forbidding blacknesses That rear like the pillars Of a satan's temple Glooming rock. And wind that howls Still An unnameable Unwombed howl of Lostnesses. And our coming And our gentle, happy laughter Our human-ness Has left you undisturbed As you seemingly have been Since the world began … A whisper Of unfet life … A second Along the aeons Of your endeavour There is Just you And the ending sea Your sole companion Sea, sand, wind, rock. Bleaknesses, Non-humanness, Non-calm. Primitive … And pitiless … The Resting Islands The resting islands Of the oldest living things on earth Lulled by the muted sounds of birds Who fear no predator. Ancient land Of primeval living things Undisturbed by violence And sudden death. Creatures born of the air Now Wingless, Unafraid Shyly certain of their welcome Upon the bosom of mother Papa.

Narrow gentle land Of rain, mists, and glorious sun. Stately stands of pink-grey kauri And deep green-grey pine Ferns of a thousand shades of greens, And silvers, and blacks, Taro Riotous in a land of unseeding? Winding valleys between steep Enticing gulleys And murmuring sleepy streams Mist-clad, mauve … Warm, gentle … Knowing nothing of clawed, fanged, sudden death. Knowing nothing of sliding things of poison, Knowing nothing of creeping, insidious things. Innocent, slumbering It seems that Nothing is fearful here Nothing is fearful that belongs here That which is fearful Sounds there … The distant busy hum Of the traffic of man … ‘Taheke’, the subject of the first poem, was the author's grandmother, and a daughter of the famous Te Whiti of Taranaki. ‘Bethells’, a beach on the West Coast of Auckland, is notorious for its many deaths. Ancient pa sites can be seen along the road to the beach. The third poem, ‘The Resting Islands’, is written from memories of the Waitakere Ranges.