1.
Since we moved into Mānoa I’ve not wanted to escape
the Ko‘olau at the head of the valley
They rise as high as atua as profound as their bodies
They’ve been here since Pele fished these fecund islands
out of Her fire and gifted them the songs
of birth and lamentation
Every day I stand on our front veranda
and on acid-free paper try and catch their constant changing
as the sun tattoos its face across their backs
Some mornings they turn into tongue-
less mist my pencil can’t voice or map
Some afternoons they swallow the dark rain
and dare me to record that on the page
What happens to them on a still and cloudless day?
Will I be able to sight Pele Who made them?
If I reach up into the sky’s head will I be able
to pull out the Ko‘olau’s incendiary genealogy?
At night when I’m not alert they grow long limbs
and crawl down the slopes of my dreams and out
over the front veranda to the frightened stars
Yesterday Noel our neighbour’s nine-
year-old son came for the third day
and watched me drawing the Ko‘olau
Don’t you get bored doing that? he asked
Not if your life depended on it! I replied
And realised I meant it
2.
There are other mountains in my life:
Vaea who turned to weeping stone as he waited
for his beloved Apaula to return and who now props
up the fading legend of Stevenson to his ‘wide and starry sky’
and reality-TV tourists hunting for treasure islands
Mauga-o-Fetu near the Fafā at Tufutafoe
at the end of the world where meticulous priests gathered
to unravel sunsets and the flights of stars that determine
our paths to Pulotu or into the unexplored
geography of the agaga
Taranaki Who witnessed Te Whiti’s fearless stand at Parihaka
against the settlers’ avaricious laws and guns
Who watched them being evicted and driven eventually
from their lands but not from the defiant struggle
their descendants continue today forever until victory
3.
The Ko‘olau watched the first people settle in the valley
The Kanaka Maoli planted their ancestor the Kalo
in the mud of the stream and swamps
and later in the terraced lo‘i they constructed
Their ancestor fed on the valley’s black blood
and flourished for generations
Recently their heiau on the western slopes was restored
The restorers tried to trace the peoples’ descendants in the valley
They found none to bless the heiau’s re-opening
On a Saturday morning as immaculate as Pele’s mana
we stood in the heiau in their welcoming presence that stretched
across the valley and up into the mountains
where their kapa-wrapped bones are hidden
4.
The Ko‘olau has seen it all
I too will go eventually
with my mountains wrapped up
in acid-free drawings that sing
of these glorious mountains
and the first Kanaka Maoli who named
and loved them forever
December 2004–January 2005
What is this centre thing that holds me to my life?
This mauli the cool Mānoa evening makes me contemplate?
Is it like the thin sliver of light I will remember
after the last sunset slips off the Ko‘olau?
Is it like the just-there acidy taste of anti-cholesterol
that promises a life after death without fat?
Is it like the owl’s sonar flight in the fearless dark
though it doesn’t know it is flying?
Is it like the desire of grass to be lush in the Mānoa rains?
Or the compulsive search by water for its apt shape?
Is it something you can crawl out off and bequeath
to another creature which needs a shell from predators?
Is it the memory of the sea womb out of which you surfaced
into the despair of the light?
Is it an invisible second skeleton of bone
your grandchildren will wear like a uniform?
Can you smoke it like pakalōlō and talk the air
into giving up its secret elixirs? And is it 10 dollars a joint?
Can you smell it? And if you can what does it smell like?
Is it the blood odour of the amniotic tide that cauled you?
Or that of hot porridge on a freezing morning at boarding school?
Or do you prefer it to be the smell of dead flowers?
Frangipani? Moso‘oi? Roses?
Or fresh bread as the morning opens your house?
What about the stench of unwashed feet?
Or an aunt’s noiseless fart as she pretends all is well with her life?
If you can touch it what do you prefer it to feel like?
The long slick clinging feel of the black Vaipē mud
out of which you have eased?
What about the whole weave of your lover’s skin as you burn?
Or the searching feel of your father’s Sunday sermons at Malie
that woke you to the mana of words?
Or the stinging bite of your grandmother’s salu on your legs?
What about the large embrace of her arms afterwards?
If you could taste it would it be
like a hotdog with mustard onions and a lot of hope?
A double cheeseburger with a lot of hope
but without onions and mustard?
Pork sapasui oka fa‘alifu kalo palusami koko alaisa or fries?
What about the taste of Marmite or Weet-Bix? (I bet only Kiwis know those!)
Or the taste of hot fish’n’chips on a Friday night in Ponsonby?
Yes this centre thing that holds even river stones to their shape and shine
that holds the owl aloft in the dark as it targets the hunger in its stride
that is the rage and sparkle in my grandchildren’s eyes
holds me true and upright to the path of my life
I did not buy or ask for it
It came with me and won’t let me forget it
until it runs out
I walk in her wake almost every morning and afternoon
along the Mānoa valley
from home and back after work
In her slipstream shielded from the wind and the future
I walk in the perfume that changes from day to day
in the mornings with our backs to the Ko‘olau
in the afternoons heading into the last light as it slithers
across the range into the west
She struts at a pace my bad left knee
and inclination won’t allow me to keep up with
And when I complain she says You just hate a woman
walking ahead of you
No I hate talking to the back of your head
I’m the Atua of Thunder she reminds me
when my pretensions as a Sāmoan aristocrat get out of hand
So kill my enemies for me I demand
Okay I’ll send storms and lightning
to drown and cinderise them
Do it now I beg
I can’t I’ve got too much breeding to act like that
(How do you cure contradictions like hers?)
She loves Bob Dylan the Prophet of Bourgeois Doom
And this morning I swam in his lyrics as she sang:
Sweet Melinda the peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
… she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon …
Yes for over a year I’ve cruised in her perfumed wake
protected from threats
She’ll take the first shot or hit in an ambush
And if a car or bike runs headlong into us
my Atua of Thunder with the aristocratic breeding
will sacrifice her body to save me
Nearly always she wears her favourite red sandals
as she like Star Trek forges boldly ahead singing Dylan songs
and me wanting to howl at the Hawaiian moon
Her youngest grandson is called Tahu Pōtiki
after the heroic founding father of their Kāi Tahu tribe
He arrived last Saturday to spend the school holidays with us
He and his two brothers are in Wesley College boarding school
Before he arrived she cleaned and ordered our apartment to suit him
She bought an orchid lei which we took to the airport and garlanded him with
Their little incessant quarrels started in the car on our way back
Ever since I’ve known them that seems to be the way:
she correcting the way he dresses eats slouches speaks
and won’t behave like his aristocratic namesake
and he grunting and refusing to bend
Since we last saw him at Xmas he has stretched into a beanpole
with long arms and legs a baby beard and a voice that squeaks and growls
in a language I can barely understand
Hawai‘i has an eternally warm climate and sea but he chooses to play
violent computer games or watch fantasy adventures and quests
And that drives her teeth out of whack
That school doesn’t teach them proper manners and etiquette
like St Mary’s in Stratford where I went she complains
It doesn’t even teach them to read and appreciate books!
They’re too bloody busy turning them
into rugby players and raving Methodists!
On Monday night when Tahu Robert Temuera and I sat down to watch
an NPC match on TV she retreated into the sullen bedroom to read
I try and keep out of their way though at times I want to shout:
Hey guys giv’us a break from that quarrelling rap!
But I don’t because whenever they’re together that’s how it is
And you can’t ever doubt the aroha between them
He flies back on Thursday and she won’t have anyone to quarrel lovingly with
Nearly always she remembers her dreams vividly
At breakfast this morning she recalled how she was flying
through a noiseless storm across the Straits for Ruapuke and her father
who was sitting on his grave in their whānau urupā
wearing a cloak of raindrops
and she looked down and back at her paddling feet
and saw she wasn’t wearing her favourite red sandals
She stopped in mid-flight in mid-storm and called
Alapati get me my saviours!
Woke and didn’t understand why she’d called them that
It’s been about thirteen years and that makes you the man
I’ve stayed the longest with she declared unexpectedly
as we cleared the breakfast dishes
To her such declarations are so obvious and like raindrops
you can flick easily off a duck’s back
but for me it will stay a nit burrowing permanently into my skin
I won’t understand why
If I tell her that she’ll probably say You love guilt too much
You read too much into things and need someone to blame
So shall I blame her for staying thirteen years and plus?
For not wearing her saviours and reaching her dead father
who would have taken off his fabulous cloak of rain and draped it around her?
Shall I blame her for not having met me when we were young
and we could have been together much longer?
Or shall I as usual let it pass
content that I am blessed to be with her
and in her dreams one day she and I will fly together
through the voiceless storm to Ruapuke and her waiting father?
She will be wearing her saviours
and we will arrive safely
September–October 2005
Last night all night a blustery wind blew from the Ko‘olau
It had no face and eyes and didn’t know it had a tongue
Last night all night on the steep slopes of the valley
a dog barked as slippery as the pebbles of the Mānoa stream
that will never know it is alive and singing for the sea
The touch of my mother’s fingers on my eyes kept me awake
In our house I needed to be afraid
I needed the healing of the blue darkness
that doesn’t know it has desires
and my mother who wants my forgiveness
for having left fifty or so years ago
No one will be saved I heard her say to a child
who needed to grow a soul that wanted saving
She also promised me the morning’s dolphin light
the skip and dance of the incoming tide
the quick intelligence of the rain
She promised me amazement
enough to fill my pockets
enough to give away and create a life with
My pockets are almost empty now
Last night I wanted her to peel off her face and stretch it across mine
I wanted her to give me her tongue and eyes
I wanted her to promise she wouldn’t die again without me
Last night all night she waited for me
at the edge of the blue darkness
It is four a.m. but my mind still refuses to blink
in case it misses something
I imagine tonight to be like the one before Tagaloaalagi invented
the alphabet which allows our tongues to name and taste our pain
and see back into the dark and map the tracks over which we have come
Except for the whispering swish of the Mānoa stream
all the other noises have left the valley
I know those noises can’t step out of their bodies
and recognise their sounds but
I’ll imagine them swimming at Waimānalo
their bodies sheathed in the skins of white sharks
I’ll imagine them surfing into my grandchildren’s dreams
as Jimi Hendrix’ hyper guitar laments
as Dylan’s unmelodious rants against the dark
as Ice-T before he sold out for a cop’s redemptive badge in SVU
I make a mug of tea and sit on the lānai sipping its smooth heat
The other apartments around me are protected by lines of security lights
Above them the pōuliuli stretches up beyond security
to where the stars cling to their precarious shine
What are stars without the pōuliuli that allows them to show their light?
What are they without the light that navigators gaze up at
and read our ways across the magic ocean of life?
What are they but readings astrologers give to our hopes?
Ferocious pieces of the once whole light which keeps bursting outwards
but will one day implode and be whole again?
What are they without me seeing them tonight?
Something that feels like a puppy’s tongue licks once at my left cheek
Again more boldly across my nose then again and longer up my face
Yes a curious breeze has slipped down from the slopes to see who I am
I want it to sit in my lap and with me welcome the dawn
that is rising and we will again be amazed
Beethoven tugged at my hearing as I spread
liliko‘i jam on my breakfast bagel
I had a strange dream last night she sd
Beethoven insisted on being heard
Do you want to hear it? she demanded
I abandoned Beethoven
and nodded enthusiastically
I dreamed I walked into this brand-
new hair-dressing salon where everything hung
down from the ceiling she sd
When I sat down they strapped a machine
to my head and told me they wanted to scan my brain
(In the next room a man was weighing a baby
who turned out to be his grandson)
Your brain isn’t human they told me
as they showed me my scan
But it is! I insisted
Then I woke up
What do you make of that? she scanned me
You need a haircut I replied
That day I heard her laughter
everywhere I went
Reina and I are well into our sixth decade
Yet up till two months ago I was too ashamed to use
our status as ‘senior citizens’ to get cheaper movie tickets
And I don’t know why when we went to see An Unfinished Life
we decided to use it but while watching Morgan Freeman and Robert Redford
playing retired cowboys I realised that
like them we are finishing off our unfinished lives
Yesterday at senior citizens’ prices we saw A History of Violence
We’re home Hone after four years in Hawai‘i
but the winter cold is driving out the delicious warmth
of those islands from my bones
La‘u uō our lifelong addiction has been to gambling
not with money but with words and though our winnings have been sparse
we’ve kept on playing
That’s probably why I thought of you when Reina and I were in Las Vegas
for the first time a few weeks back
and I recalled your winter pilgrimage many years ago with your son down
from the Head of Māui’s Ika to Whanganui and up to Jerusalem
to farewell a tired old mate in a tent
laid out in a box
with no money in the pocket
no fancy halo, no thump left in the old
ticker
Our trip though was not to a mate’s tangi
but simply to visit a cousin and meet the Beast that is Vegas
At Honolulu Airport beloved friends wished us well
and sent us on our way with their aloha
In summer America is cocooned in air-conditioning
so when we unpacked like blind sardines out of the plane
and the Vegas airport terminal into the morning the desert heat was
like raw buffalo hide tightening around us as it dried
and we blinked into thick bone-white air that smelled of dead fires and ash
Why had I expected Vegas to smell new and crisp?
And I remembered we agreed all our journeys are about other journeys
and through intricate layers of maps
Not just geographical political historical maps but those of
the moa and heart dream maps cinematic and literary maps
maps of pain and suffering arrogance and deliberate erasures
maps which are the total of our cultural baggage
and in which we are imprisoned
and through which we read elusive reflections
This trip wasn’t any different
The persuasive blonde at the Avis counter offered us
a GPS system and we took it – we’d not used one before
Out of all the maps I’d inherited of Vegas I’d come to imagine
it a supersized civilisation created by a special effects genius
hired by hip gangsters or conjured up
by a gambler prophet hallucinating wildly
after fasting forty days and nights in the wilderness
But as our GPS with the Maureen O’Hara voice piloted us
through gigantic rows of casino and hotel billboards with gorgeous
Colgate smiles inviting us to dance forever with chance
through supersized developments of new homes they couldn’t sell –
the bottom had fallen out of the housing market –
through oases of grubby pawnshops and other businesses that picked
at the desperate bones of addicts
the hip maps began to vanish
When we checked into our Holiday Inn well away from the Strip
we were told our room wouldn’t be ready until mid-afternoon
so in the blistering heat we went looking for food and found Sunset Station
and walked into all the clichés about Vegas: cavernous palaces of perpetual
night without time peopled by exacting machines into
which mesmerised worshippers fed their adoration
gaming tables surrounded by narrow-eyed players in the zone
of the spinning wheel or the flip of the card and the throw of the dice
The huge craziness of it was enthralling
Later as we sampled the Strip’s mega mega-resorts
with names straight out of Hollywood and the dream of gigantism
The Mirage
Wynn Las Vegas
The Sands
Treasure Island
The Golden Nugget
The Excalibur
The Luxor
The MGM Grand
Caesar’s Palace
The Venetian
I recognised the Beast was indeed a creature
as magnificent as the Sphinx and the pyramids born out
of the Pharaohs’ addiction to immortality
But this Beast insatiable was feeding off the American Dream
of limitless credit choice and size
one press of the button one spin of the wheel one throw of the dice
and you’re out of the desert forever
Every night the porcelain moon over the city wore the Joker’s cynical face
but a rescuing Batman wasn’t in sight
as our cousin showed us how to play the machines
He played as if he was playing the piano and we tried to copy him
as we slotted in our money and lost and lost but I didn’t care
because I kept hoping for that buzz that radiates through
my veins when I’m gambling with words that shape
fabulous beasts out of the deserts of ourselves
But auē Hone the buzz never came
and I found gambling for money sadly sadly boring
Not my choice of addiction
The tangata whenua have been written out of Vegas’ history
On our last night as we and our cousin and other relatives gorged
on the buffet at a Japanese restaurant they told us of Hawaiian friends
who’d just walked off a building site because three of their mates
had been killed there in terrible accidents
When they’d started bulldozing the site one of the Hawaiians a kahuna
had sensed the enormous disquiet of the spirits of the tangata whenua
who he believed were buried there
and had asked their white bosses to stop the project
and let him perform the rituals of appeasement and cleansing
They’d refused and within three days their friends were dead
The next morning in light as brittle as salt Reina my beloved tautai
drove us out of Vegas and we headed for the Grand Canyon and Santa Fe
in the arid heart of America
But that’s another story Hone for another winter day
We are programmed with used-by dates but so far
I’ve outlived mine using pills and other remedies
But when the time comes I want it to be a summer morning
of cool temperatures and mellow sighs
of the sun enjoying the full spread of Ponsonby
oblivious to how I am snaring and using it
to illuminate this poem’s way towards
understanding and completing itself
of the smell of toast and hot coffee nosing its way down O’Neill Street
without knowing it is entering my house at number 63
and meeting the well-tended memories that people
wall floor carpet and hold up the ceilings
of the full horde of hungry sparrows in my back yard feasting
as usual on the bread I tossed out the previous night
of my children and mokopuna snug in their alofa for one another
and the other people I love will forgive me for leaving
a slow unassuming morning that will swing open –
it won’t know it is a door – and I’ll slip through it
into the endless summer light that won’t know I’m leaving
the body that is unaware it is bone and pain
to be part of that which connects all things to all things
and right back again to the dark and the first spark
that set me alight and this poem that is struggling to become
that morning of my going away
to be all that was now and will be in the stretch
of Tagaloaalagi’s breath