A Reconstruction
murmur
mormorio
susurration
audible silence
picked at in the fowlyard below
earth smell
as of wattle root
and through their tracery
azure
puffed with white
That is ‘for example’
lying in the track through wattles
above the vegetable garden
in sight of the lemon tree
and there was beyond the lemon
asparagus
beyond asparagus
beans
and the brown boards of the fowlhouse
and the grey rocks that were
SCORIA
stone on stone
walls / terracing
as of a century’s habitation
work of one man one decade
upper lawns and flower beds
lower garden and orchard
paths
the pergola
rotting under its roses
stone on stone
Energy cousin to benevolence
and both of light
on grass
on grey absorbing stone
on the three green
visible cones
to the north-east
Mt Eden
eastward One Tree Hill
west
Mt Albert
that have inflamed their skies
burst in cloud
sent rolling out
rivers of rock
congealing
to a ridged and rifted landscape
outcrop on which to stand a house
wallstones
or stones for a small hand
bent on birds
the fields of bracken and wattle
littered as of battle
the dead cones their obsolete cannon
Maungawhau
Maungakiekie
Owairaka.
Dry
its pores edged
sharp to the touch
bearded often
with a white lichen
hard on palms
on bare knees
but a warm refuge
my friend the rock
Ivy had swamped had smothered the front wall
the stable one so held so cluttered
you could walk on it lie down on it
vanish in its broad top die in it
breathing its scent like a dust that caught in the throat
unseen between in the dark shine of leaf
heaped there over the hairy arms that bound it
the tall rock wall above the level lawn
where was always trimming cutting to be done
mower clippers the sword and by the monkeyapple
lilac that in this month in this spring sun
will be blossoming still above its worm-eaten wrists
over the dwarf lemon beside the impossible gate
larger than life in sight of the sun and shut.
Three Kings
the nearest cone
but hidden beyond two ridges
of its own making
a suburb’s frayed edge in
billy-filling summer
the black
berry
in the dry
grass and bracken
about the dripping cave mouths
saying
we are your neighbourhood gods
Vulcan
Matuahou
created your world in our image
of scattered stones
who sleep in your dreams
who breathe on your pillow
whose skies we painted red remember us
and the pie broke open and bled on the hotplate
and the sun was a crippled smith
journeying
forge above
below
and between the blue black
As the matador’s cape concealed the steel
so the spread wing in sunlight
or a black shield
green in sunlight
the black knight strutting and shining
green in sunlight
under the red comb she goes down for
as under a cloud
as under a fiery banner
crouching
to the packed soil
beyond the bean rows
black on black glinting
green in sunlight
shuddering
a moment only
ruffling
and back to
picking and scratching
picking and
scratching
it being important to scratch the packed earth
to the left and the right
with thighs big like a peasant’s
under heavy skirts
importantly
to the left and the right
picking in the scratches
and the small head stops
and the bead eye stares
into the lacery
the round blank shining eye
staring
into the lacery.
Wattle in sunlight
Hephaestus’ golden net
scent of verbena
‘he who shines by day’ lays down
green sheen over black feathers
glint in her beads
and Ares astrut
under the blue canopy
laced with gold.
Somnolent under the forged net of gold
and in nostrils
verbena
and in the air
audible silence
scratched at in the fowl-yard below
dream of flight
waiting in the wax
in the wings
Naxos Delos Paros
the child’s legs vanishing in ocean
father to the man
who might carry to his forged world
word of
SCORIA
PARIS
the WARS
the smoky athletes
longing for rest
verbena rosemary
lavender lilac daphne
and under the piano windows
carnation
where water ran warm from the tap
and the tamed foundation stones absorbed the sun.
Czerny and verbena
Mozart and rosemary
lavender and Liszt
and for the Moonlight Sonata
perhaps the primal challenge
of cut grass
to purify the nostrils of the tribe
with scented gardens through the blind
a déreglement of nose and ear and eye
‘notes of colour’
chromatic scales
even
arpeggios of light
harmonies of shade
over blade leaf petal stalk stamen
receding rising
beyond the ivied wall across the school the suburb
to the green cone
cold forge of Hephaestus
hammer of Vulcan
source of all.
‘Come to Manukau
to the fields of Tainui
for scented grasses’
this to Reia
sleek bodied taniwha
dolphin god of the Ngatitamatera
playing in sunlight
in the shallows of Hauraki
the enticement of scented herbs
that brought him swimming northward
where club and cooking-pot waited
sunrise
long shadow
and out of shadow
voices of the Ngatitamatera
crying vengeance on
Maungakiekie
Maungawhau
the pa of Tainui.
Ground shook
on which walked no man
hot stones rolled from the lip
gods stirring the cauldron
Vulcan Matuahou
laying
shadow over the harbour
day dark and shrunken
night inflamed
groaning under earth
twittering in heaven
trees tossing on windless slopes
where walked no man
the lip spitting fire
bright rock bounding
down dark slopes
blitzkrieg of the blacked-out valley
and one slow armoured column
pushing into the valley
moving forest about
adjusting stream and tide-flow
Phlegethon flowing under glass
over its own hardness
cooling westward down
into the valley.
Cloudfire rockflight flow
as of glacier
where walked no man
westward into the valley.
How you slept knowing it your own sleeping
face the flies explored their walk your waking
those summer Sundays late that drew you back
to a dream of legs each fly a feather’s point
over brow lip nose with curious communication
of purpose hurrying and halting departing arriving
and there must be glare pushing at the blind edges
the hot room holding in its teasing dream
your hand from waving away the white legs
melting like wax in true blue open ocean
for ever walking westward out of Naxos
out of thin air the fallen feathers floating
Bk bk bk bkaa bkaaa
bkaa bkaaaa
bk bk bk bk
bkaa bkaaaa
bk bk bk
bk bk bk bk bk
lay language
your waking
subsiding (bk bk bk)
to the languid / discontented
kaaaaa
kaaaaaa
kaaaaaaa.
Veronica
of the spread wing in sunlight
and to Dieffenbach
that other veronica
speciosa
the koromiko
in lilac flower among flax
its scent on the air
‘where this shrub grows
is richest soil’
green-bronze mirrors of flax
turning in the breeze
catching sunlight
on the slopes of ‘Manakao Harbour’.
Aspire to no forge nor flight
but five short steps to the bar
driving
DOWN
left foot shaking the earth
and out of that crouch
arms shoulders right leg gathering
the whole weight
and over
‘falling to foam’
or as it was in those days
to sandpit
or under the piano windows
to cut grass
to make that bar your horizon
horizon your bed
and to lie along it
defying the upright posture
a moment weightless before
the Fall
to roll in cuttings
in earshot of
Beethoven
Rachmaninov
Chopin
as if to have swum in that moment
without support of water
to have draped yourself over
the skyline’s elegant couch
informally
before the angel entered
bringing gravity to the garden
scales falling like glass from the windows
scent of grass invading
legs tumbling ungainly
and a bamboo pole your horizon
holding
5ft 2.
‘Owairaka’ (said Robinson)
‘surf-rider
daughter of a chief’
from Kawhia (was it?)
and the tribe moved north
built their pa on the hill
gave it her name
but couldn’t hold it
against the tribes of the isthmus
palisades breached
fire and blade and spearpoint ascending the slope
only the caves for escape
running crouched
through crooked caverns
shouts and shadows pursuing
and at the narrowest pass the gross old chief
wedged himself after them
died there to be hacked out
while his people escaped
into the manuka valley
Owairaka / Mt Albert
the westerly one
fringed with eucalypt
blue-grey in distance
against the Waitakere Range
and Mt Eden / Maungawhau
where we held our breath watching
she on the back seat of the car
he over her
in mist
the windows clouded
moving as in a dream
and One Tree Hill
arcadia
white on green
lambs and daisies in grass
among lichened outcrops
beyond the olive grove
in sight of the sea.
New timber new iron
‘panting of saw’
conflict of hammers
(7 true notes to the nail)
sawdust on the wind
and under iron where showers beat
over stonecrop and bracken
the suburb moving
inching over itself
red roofs green gardens
across the isthmus
towards the further harbour
And she said ‘Please get me that horse manure’
meaning the beautiful big bran muffins
steaming in the roadway
handing me the bucket and shovel
a day full of hammering
that seemed to stop and listen
repeating ‘manure for the garden’
pushing the bucket at me
and whose garden was it
and if it was no shame and no one would laugh
why didn’t she get it herself
forced out protesting
to scoop it up
under the unseen seeing
of saws and hammers.
Ernst Dieffenbach
1843
‘the government town of Auckland
7 miles from harbour to harbour
2000 inhabitants
a bank
a fine barracks of SCORIAE’
and 15 years later
Julius von Haast
‘the hills
models of volcanic action
have made luxuriant gardens’
Hochstetter 1867
‘cones
with craters distinct
Rangitoto
and at the century’s turn
the grandfather Swede
no ‘sang aus dem Exil’
(unless the ‘sang’ should be blood)
but moving stone over stone
terraces walls
as of a century’s habitation
a landscape adjusted
to the will of a man
in the hot eye of Vulcan
under the hammer of Thor
between two seas.
Winter rain
splitting firewood in mud
the blinding melancholy
of the thrush on a wet lawn
of the grey warbler singing
intolerable Sundays
Waitakeres curtained in cloud
Mt Eden swimming in windows
the roast the early fire
a dead man’s gloom alive
his ‘sang aus dem Exil’
in redwood panels
clean hands on cold keys
cold feet on clean linoleum
and through aquarium glass
the green world
heavy with moisture
the grey rocks
black with rain
the iron roofs
loud with it
and crystal ski-lifts
running on telephone wires
but on a rare clear morning
sheet-ice on barrelwater
crystals over bunched soil
black burns on broadleaf.
Maungawhau / hill of the whau tree
from the hilltop two harbours
and westward
the Waitakere Range
and he saw fires on Maungakiekie
and called his people inside the palisades
stomachs tight
fear in the pits at sundown
crouching behind the lashed stakes of manuka
moon cold over the Gulf
and silence
Sunrise
long shadow
and out of shadow
voices of the Ngatitamatera
crying vengeance on Tainui
for the death of Reia
mid-morning the palisades breached
high noon
the last skull crushed
on the slopes of the crater
Unbroken silence of the tapu
harbours blue and gold
isthmus green
spring wind in the whau’s white flowers
among the rotting stakes
Maungawhau / Mt Eden
200 years of silence
hill of death
hill of heaven.