Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925–2009), poet, playwright and novelist, was born in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands and spent his early years there. His mother was a Penrhyn Islander and his father a third-generation New Zealander. For years, Campbell was a poet in the European tradition. The first major expression of his early Polynesian influences was in Sanctuary of Spirits (1963), when he wrote of the Māori history which surrounded his home at Pukerua Bay. At that time he identified with the local Ngāti Toa tribe, but later he returned to the Cook Islands and found a new sense of identity. His books of poetry include The Dark Lord of Savaiki (1980), Soul Traps (1985), Stone Rain (1992), Gallipoli and Other Poems (1999), Maori Battalion (2001), Poets in Our Youth (Pemmican Press), The Dark Lord of Savaiki: Collected Poems (2005), Just Poetry (2007) and, with Meg Campbell, It’s Love, Isn’t It? (2008). He was awarded an Honorary DLitt from Victoria University of Wellington and in 2005 he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
How’s this for cheek?
They steal a prize pig
belonging to a local
bigwig, slaughter it,
put it on a stretcher,
cover it with a blanket,
and make their solemn way
past the sentries who
snap to attention
in homage to a comrade
dead in defence of freedom –
and let them through.
And what do you say
to that? Don’t tell me.
It’s the Māori way.
I have fought throughout the war
from Greece to Crete, from Crete
to North Africa, and from there
to Italy. I am battle-scarred.
I have been wounded in a dozen
places. My mind doesn’t work
properly any more. I have nightmares.
Night and day I see pictures
of my closest mates falling
beside me in so many battles
I have forgotten when and where
it was they died. I have shed
so many tears, I have no tears
left to shed. Where my mind
used to be there is nothing
but darkness, the sound of roaring,
and emptiness. I have become
an empty street in a town
that has been blown to pieces.
No one lives there any more,
no one who loves sunlight –
and yet at the special church
service at Maadi at the end of
the war when the battalion
sang the sacred hymn ‘Auē Ihu’
my dead mates came alive, and for
the first time in years I wept,
and so did the strong men singing
beside me. That night at base camp
I dreamt of rain in the desert.
There at the bed-foot, there
where the shadows thicken
and shape themselves into tricks
of the imagination
that surprise and sicken,
lurks Māui.
from the corner of your eye
aren’t really mice at all,
but little bits of mischief
and running blind.
It’s now that your hand,
dangling from the bedclothes,
is at risk of being bitten,
snapped off at the wrist,
fought over, eaten.
Stay in bed, close your eyes,
breathe a prayer,
and should you sense your soul
drifting out the window,
don’t fight it, let it go.
Let the mice rejoice in the ruin
spreading across the floor,
up the walls, across the ceiling,
across the sky,
that would surely fall,
if Māui were not there to spin
his fantasies,
if Māui were not there at all.
for Jean and Tiline
Sleep walking in Rarotonga – island
of haunted peaks, coral white churches,
wayside graves, flamboyantes in full
blossom, staining the roads blood red –
sleep walking, I find myself again
in Takuvaine Road where long ago
we lived as children. There was laughter,
there was singing, there were tears.
But the house has been pulled down,
the childish voices silenced,
and the dream fades like sea mist at dawn
when suddenly it turns cold.
Of our house at the landing nothing
remains but a crumbling concrete
watertank and the rubble of
a concrete floor. The same is true
of the store that was across the way.
Both sites have been overwhelmed
by scrub and coconut trees that have
grown tall during the seventy years
since we lived here. I pushed my way
through the rank weeds, and my trouser
legs became covered with sticky black
seeds, but nothing more was
to be seen. I had half expected to see
two small ghosts wandering about,
unable to comprehend what had happened
to their lives, first in Tahiti,
then here in Atiu … And at the deserted
landing-place the sea had nothing to say.
A marquee on Manuia Beach; night
pressing down on the canvas,
as we dine; tūpāpaku swarming
from tapu places on the island,
but kept at bay by powerful tūpuna
from Tongareva. Darkness falls off
them in scales as they appear
in a blaze of light and as quickly
vanish … Unnerved I turn to Cousin
Tangaroa, who reminds me of our
first meeting: ‘When I kissed you,
our ancestors passed before my
eyes. My wife was scared when I
told her. Now here they are,
summoned by your poems. Don’t be
afraid. They come to honour you.’
And so under their aura, all evening
we eat and drink, make speeches,
laugh, enjoying each other’s
company. Too soon the party ends,
and I sense the tapu lifting
as we embrace and say goodbye.