From a low hill I saw the Ringatu pennon
black and white in the sun. Inside the stockade
were women, old men. Warriors? At most a dozen
and my father’s friend, Mr Hill. They were fighting hard
but it couldn’t last. I think I ran in fear.
Next day I met some soldiers dragging two guns
that stuck in sand. They’d spent the night drinking beer
in an abandoned house – Mr Finlayson’s.
‘Too late for guns,’ I told them. ‘Take your spades.’
That day we found poor Mr and Mrs Lavin
in front of their house, arms round each other, dead –
their two small boys dead also. I walked to the river
and washed my face and watched the water running.
My fear was gone. Now truly I wanted this war.
The Press complain of defeats. They say his men
call him ‘Gravedigger’. He answers that all such slanders
are only the other face of our settler fears,
and needless! – already Te Kooti’s power is broken.
We praise him. Over dinner he talks of his acres.
His wife shoots like a trooper. He tells us she rode
dispatches for him when Panapa’s rebels tried
to take the Coast. From Auckland he has sent her
live rabbits, pheasants and bees for their estate;
blackberry also, and gorse. Oak and elm
are growing well. They want it to look like Home.
He raises his glass. ‘But luxuries must wait.
Gentlemen, I drink to a nation in the making.
This war must be won.’ He rides south in the morning.