The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature

by Jane Stafford

  The next morning Kirwan and I were taken before Colonel Simpson. He glanced at me and said: ‘Well?’ I looked straight at him and answered: ‘Well?’

  ‘They tell me,’ said he, ‘that they can do nothing with you down there.’

  ‘You sent me there to try to compel me by force to submit to army discipline.’

  ‘I have tried hard to consider you, but my hand has been forced. I once had hopes of you. It is most regrettable that you should take up such an attitude. What do you think will happen to you up the lines if you won’t submit?’

  I told him I had no intention of submitting and was not concerned about consequences.

  He said: ‘Well, I hope it is so.’

  This remark puzzled me at the time and still does.

  He turned roughly on Kirwan and ended by saying: ‘I have no time for you at all. When you get up there and are ordered to dig, take my advice and dig. If you don’t, you’ll be hammered black and blue from head to foot.’

  ‘That’s the way he always goes for me,’ said Kirwan when we were outside again; ‘he seems to have a set on me.’

  ‘It’s meant for me just as much as for you,’ I said.

  As I knew we were to be sent up the lines the next day, I thought I should try to give my people some idea of what had happened to me so far and what my attitude still was. This might be the last chance I should have of writing. I said:

  ‘I have just time to send you this brief note. I am being sent up the lines tomorrow. I have not heard where Jack and Sandy are. As far as military service goes, I am of the same mind as ever. It is impossible for me to serve in the army. I would a thousand times rather be put to death and I am sure you all believe that the stand I take is right. I have never told you since I left New Zealand of the things I have passed through, for I knew how it would hurt you. I only tell you now, so that, if anything happens to me, you will know. I have suffered to the limit of my endurance, but I will never in my sane senses surrender to the evil power that has fixed its roots like a cancer on the world. I have been treated as a soldier who disobeys (No. 1 Field Punishment). That is hard enough at this time of the year, but what made it worse for me was that I was bound to refuse military work, even as a prisoner. It is not possible for me to tell in words what I have suffered. But you will be glad to know that I have met with a great many men who have shown me the greatest kindness …. If you hear that I have served in the army or that I have taken my own life, do not believe that I did it in my sound mind. I never will ….’

  I cannot think how I could possibly have imagined that such a letter would pass the censor. The strange thing was that it did, and reached my people in New Zealand unaltered. I wrote the letter in the police quarters, and took it down to the censor’s hut. I was wearing neither coat nor hat. I laid it on the table in front of him. A sergeant who was present roared at me: ‘Salute the officer!’

  I refused: ‘I have never saluted anyone in the army and I don’t intend to.’

  ‘If you never saluted before you’ll do it now,’ shouted the sergeant. ‘Salute the officer.’

  I turned to the censor who was sitting behind the table: ‘I refuse to salute you, not because I have anything against you personally, but because I object to military service. I have no doubt I would respect you if I knew you as a civilian, but I have no respect for your rank as officer. I consider myself a civilian, and do not salute officers. Besides,’ I added, ‘I am in undress.’

  The officer had a kindly smile and most intelligent face and it now lit up with a smile. But he said not a word.

  ‘Shall I crime him, Sir? Shall I make out a crime sheet, Sir?’ asked the sergeant eagerly, disregarding my remarks on being in undress.

  ‘Not as far as I am concerned,’ the officer replied.

  The sergeant nearly choked: ‘He’s refused an order, Sir, shall I take him to the guardroom, Sir?’

  The officer, still smiling, answered: ‘I think he will find his way there without you,’ and I left, without an escort.

  On my return to the guardroom, the military police dressed me fully, put a box respirator on me and took me, along with Kirwan, to a small structure like a telephone booth, in which we went, one after the other, through a gas test. Back again in the guardroom, they tried to force a rifle with bayonet fixed, on to me. I refused and when it was forced into my hands I stuck the bayonet into the floor and told them to go and ask the Colonel if I was to be given a rifle. They came back with the information that the Colonel had said I was on no account to be given a rifle.

  (1939)

  Robin Hyde, ‘East Side’

  In the deserted village, sunken down

  With a shrug of last weak old age, after the shells

  All people are fled, or killed. Not one mild house

  So much as a sparrow hears on earthen floor,

  Walls stand, but cannot live without the folk they loved—

  It will be a bad thing to wake them.

  Having smashed the rice-bowl, do not fill it again.

  The village temple, well-built, with five smashed gods, ten whole ones

  Does not want prayers. Its last vain prayer bled up

  When the women ran outside, to be slain.

  A temple must house its sparrows, or fall asleep,

  Therefore a long time, under his crown of snails,

  The gilded Buddha demands to meditate.

  No little flowering fires on the incense-strings

  Startle Kwan-Yin, whom they dressed in satin—

  Old women sewing beads like pearls in her hair.

  This was a temple for the very poor ones—

  Their gods were mud and lathe: but artfully,

  Wistfully, in the well-appointed colours

  Some broken artist painted them all,

  Wooden dragons are carefully carved.

  Finding in mangled wood one smiling, childish tree,

  Roses and bells, not one foot high,

  I put it back at the feet of Kwan-Yin.

  Showing mercy one mercy.

  A woman’s prayer-bag

  Having within her paper prayer, paid for in cash

  Perhaps for a fighting son,

  Perhaps for the little son who sought not her womb,

  This I took, seeing it torn.

  No prayer can I answer, or understand—

  What prayers were answered, those last red nights?

  Carrying her bag around the course of the world,

  I shall often think ‘My sister I did not see

  Voiced here a dying wish.

  But the gods dreamed on. So low her words, so loud

  The guns, that death-night, none could stoop to hear.’

  (1938–39; 2003)

  Douglas Stewart, ‘Green Lions’

  The bay is gouged by the wind

  In the jagged hollows green lions crouch,

  And stretch,

  And slouch,

  And sudden with spurting manes and a glitter of haunches

  Charge at the shore

  And rend the sand and roar.

  And inland, in offices and banks

  Though trams clang down and heavy stone resists

  The mutter of distant carnage still persists,

  And men denied the jungle of young years

  Grow taut, and clench their fists.

  (1936)

  What Is It Makes the Stranger?

  Robin Hyde, ‘What is it makes the stranger?’

  What is it makes the stranger? Say, oh eyes!

  Because I was journeying far, sailing alone,

  Changing one belt of stars for the northern belt,

  Men in my country told me, ‘You will be strange—

  Their ways are not our ways; not like ourselves

  They think, suffer and dream.’

  So sat I silent, and watched the stranger, why he was strange.

  But now, having come so far, shed the eight cloaks of the wind,

  Ridden ponies of foam, a
nd the great stone lions of six strange cities.

  What is it makes the stranger? Say, oh eyes!

  Eyes cannot tell. They view the selfsame world—

  Outer eyes vacant till thoughts and pictures view them,

  Inner eyes watching secret paths of the brain.

  Hands? But the hands of my country knit reeds, bend wood,

  Shape out the pliable parts of boats and roofs.

  Mend pots, paint pictures, write books

  Though different books: glean harvests, if different harvests,

  Not so green as young rice first shaking its spears from water.

  Hands cannot say. Feet then? They say

  In shoe, not sandal, or bare, if a man be poor,

  They thread long ways between daylight and dark,

  Longer, from birth to death,

  Know flint from grasses, wear soles through, hate sharp pebbles,

  Often times long for the lightness of birds.

  Yet in my country, children, even the poor

  Wear soft warm shoes, and a little foot in the dance

  Warms the looks of young men, no less than here.

  In my country, on summer evenings, clean as milk poured out

  From old blue basins, children under the hawthorn trees

  Fly kites, lacing thin strings against the sky.

  Not at New Year, but at other festivals

  We light up fire-crackers

  In memory of old buried danger, now a ghost danger.

  Coming to your land, I saw little boys spin tops.

  The girls marked patterns in chalks about your street—

  This game I might have told them at five years old.

  A man sold peanuts, another warmed hands at his brazier,

  A smiling mother suckled the first-born at her breast.

  On a roof-garden, among the delicate red-twigged bowing of winter trees,

  The small grave bowls of dwarf pines (our pines grow tall,

  Yet the needle-sharp hair is the same), one first star swam,

  Silver in lily-root dusk. Two lovers looked up.

  Hands, body, heart in my breast,

  Whispered, ‘These are the same. Here we are not so strange—

  Here there are friends and peace.

  We have known such ways, we in our country!’

  Black-tiled roofs, curled like wide horns, and hiding safe

  From the eyes of the stranger, all that puts faith in you.

  Remember this, of an unknown woman who passed,

  But who stood first, high on the darkening roof-garden, looking down.

  My way behind me tattered away in wind,

  Before me, was spelt with strange letters.

  My mind was a gourd heavy with sweet and bitter waters.

  Since I could not be that young girl, who heedless of stars

  Now watched the face of her lover,

  I wished to be, for one day, a man selling mandarins,

  A blackened tile in some hearth-place; a brazier, a well, a good word,

  A blackened corpse along the road to Chapei,

  Of a brave man, dead for his country.

  Shaking the sweet-bitter waters within my mind,

  It seemed to me, all seas fuse and intermarry.

  Under the seas, all lands knit fibre, interlock.

  On a highway so ancient as China’s

  What are a few miles more, to the ends of the earth?

  Is another lantern too heavy, to light up, showing the face

  Of farers and wayfarers, stumbling the while they go,

  Since the world has called them stranger?

  Only two rebels cried out ‘We do not understand.’

  Ear said, ‘China and we

  Struck two far sides of a rock: music came forth,

  Our music and theirs, not the one music.

  Listening in street and stall, I hear two words,

  Their word and mine. Mine is not understood,

  Therefore am I an exile here, a stranger,

  Eaten up with hunger for what I understand,

  and for that which understands.’

  Tongue said, ‘I know

  The sweet flavours of mandarin or fish. But mouth and I,

  Speaking here, are mocked. Looks fall on us like blows.

  Mistress, we serve you well, and not for cash,

  But free men. Therefore, beseech you, let us go on.’

  Heart lowlier said ‘There is a way of patience—

  Let ear study the door to understanding.

  Mouth, there is silence first, but fellowship

  Where children laugh or weep, the grown smile or frown.

  Study, perceive and learn. Let not two parts

  Unwisely make an exile of the whole.’

  But still the rebels bawled, and so I saw

  How in a world divorced from silences

  These are the thieves.

  Ear, who no longer listening well, sniffs up

  The first vain trash, the first argument into his sack.

  Mouth, who will spew it forth, but to be heard—

  Both ill-taught scholars, credulous liars,

  Seizing on, flinging up fuel.

  Their flame the restlessness of such sick worlds,

  As cannot know their country, or earth’s country;

  Their moment, or an age’s moment.

  Having such brawling servants in my train

  I can be neither tile nor lamp.

  Only a footprint. Some boy sees it at dawn

  Before his tilted cart wheels over it;

  Only a sped and broken arrow,

  Pointing a way where men will come in peace—

  But I betrayed by restless—

  ————

  Yet in my country (in your country

  Brown women’s hands are deft in weaving grassy houses)

  Boys fish, willows watch their blowing tresses in stream,

  Good, against evil, sets a young wrestler’s foot,

  Praying for strength from his hills.

  No more I say, but that once

  My father brought home an old flute.

  Very small was our house: but twisting poppies run wild

  In our hair, my three sisters and I

  Danced that night like three sources of corn.

  (1938–39; 2003)

  Robin Hyde, Author’s Foreword to The Godwits Fly

  Concerning Godwits

  But many people do not know what a godwit is. And the dictionary says sourly, a kind of marsh bird. Of the immense northerly migrations that yearly in New Zealand, when summer is gone, shake wings into the sky as if from a giant’s saltpot, nothing is told. But this is true: every year, from sandy hollows in the north of the northernmost of those three islands, the godwits set out on a migration beside which the swallow’s blue hither and yon is a mere stroll with wings.

  And it is true, too, that the godwits, flying north, never go near England. They fly to Siberia. But to a child in this book, it was all more simple. A long way was a long way. North was mostly England, or a detour to England.

  Later she thought, most of us here are human godwits; our north is mostly England. Our youth, our best, our intelligent, brave and beautiful, must make the long migration, under a compulsion they hardly understand; or else be dissatisfied all their lives long. They are the godwits. The light bones of the mother knew it before the chick was hatched from the eggshell.

  England is very beautiful, she thought, staring at a tree whose hair … not properly flowers … was the colour of fire. And this also is very beautiful.

  ‘Where is Mowbray? Where is Mortimer?’ whisper the old leaves of their history. ‘Nay, and more than all these, where is Plantagenet?’ But ours, darker, might cry, ‘Where is Selwyn? Where is Rutherford? Where is Katherine, with weeds on her grave at Fontainebleau, when what she really wanted was the dark berry along our creeks? (Don’t you remember? We call them Dead Man’s Bread.) Nay, and more than all these, where ar
e our nameless, the beautiful and intelligent who went away and died, in wars and otherwise, the beautiful and intelligent who went away and hopelessly failed, or came back and were never themselves any more?’

  Passing judgements on any circumstance, compulsion, fate, is no use at all, she thought. England is beautiful: this also is beautiful. They are the godwits. Still, I think it odd, because I know this country. Think not without a bitter price …. That’s for the easy brittle plough, that wants our hills.

  We are old and can wait, said the untamed soil against which she pressed her fingers; although it, more than anything else, was awake and aware of its need to be a country … the integration of a country from the looseness of a soil. Maybe, responded the girl; though logically, living or dead, they ought to have the same compulsion to come back … the godwits, I mean. And, of course, there’s something fine, a King of the Castle feeling, about having the place almost to oneself. Fine but lonely ….

  Only fools, said the sparse-ribbed rock, are ever lonely.

  (1938)

  R.A.K. Mason, ‘Latter-Day Geography Lesson’

  This, quoth the Eskimo master

  was London in English times:

  step out a little bit faster

  you two young men at the last there

  the Bridge would be on our right hand

  and the Tower near where those crows stand—

  we struck it you’ll recall in Gray’s rhymes:

  this, quoth the Eskimo master

  was London in English times.

  This, quoth the Eskimo master

  was London in English days:

  beyond that hill they called Clapham

  boys that swear Master Redtooth I slap ’em

  I dis-tinct-ly heard—you—say—Bastard

  don’t argue: here boys, ere disaster

  overtook her, in splendour there lay

  a city held empires in sway

  and filled all the earth with her praise:

  this, quoth the Eskimo master

  was London in English days.

  She held, quoth the Eskimo master

  ten million when her prime was full

  from here once Britannia cast her

  gaze over an Empire vaster

  even than ours: look there Woking

  stood, I make out, and the Abbey

  lies here under our feet you great babby