An unremembered legion of labourers did this,
scarring the stubborn clay, fighting the tangled bush,
blasting the adamant, stemming the unbridled rush
of torrent in flood, bridging each dark abyss.
Their tools were pitiful beside the obdurate strength of the land:
crosswire of the theodolite, pick-point, curved shovel,
small tremor of a touched-off charge; but above all
the skill and strength, admirable in patience, of the hand.
These men we should honour above the managers of banks.
They pitted their flesh and their cunning against odds
unimagined by those who turn wordily the first sods.
And on the payroll their labour stands unadorned by thanks.
Who they are, or where, we do not know. Anonymous they die
or drift away; some start the job again; some in a country pub
recount old epic deeds amid that unheeding hubbub,
telling of pitiless hills, wet mountain roads where rusting barrows lie.
(1939)
Denis Glover, ‘The Magpies’
When Tom and Elizabeth took the farm
The bracken made their bed,
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
Tom’s hand was strong to the plough
Elizabeth’s lips were red,
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
Year in year out they worked
While the pines grew overhead,
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
But all the beautiful crops soon went
To the mortgage-man instead,
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
Elizabeth is dead now (it’s years ago);
Old Tom went light in the head;
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies said.
The farm’s still there. Mortgage corporations
Couldn’t give it away.
And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The magpies say.
(1941)
Masculinities
Denis Glover, ‘The Arraignment of Paris’
to back-scratchers and rhubarb eaters everywhere
Come down, sweet Muse, come down! You mustn’t roam
in realms where Gloria finds herself at home,
in realms where Eve with inky footsteps goes
leading the dimpled cloudlets by the nose.
Come down, I say, from where on high there dwell
the solemn saints whom Eileen knows so well—
yield gracefully to all our striving lasses
the grandstand seats on One Tree Hill Parnassus,
nor pause one soulful moment to admire
that Siren-Circe sweet soprano choir.
Unfurl your classic chiton to the breeze,
and parachute to earth with wonted ease
(but not towards our bush so dark and ferny,
for that’s been done to death by Mary Gurney).
Come down, old girl, we’re going on the spree;
we’ll have some fun, before we have our tea;
we’ll break a head or two; we’ll raise a scandal
before the fifteenth or the sixteenth handle!
*
Alas, New Zealand literature distils
an atmosphere of petticoats and frills
(or shall we say, to shock the dear old vicars,
an atmosphere of brassières and knickers?).
It is a problem for the best of brains,
and yet the melancholy fact remains
that questing for the literary grail
the female is more deadly than the male.
It’s but a minor object now to harass
the girls arraigned before our local Paris,
that arbiter of all our arts and letters
presenting rotten apples to his betters.
My proper aim is rousingly to thwack
that self-same Paris on his flinching back
with hearty heaviness—and, if he can,
I hope he’ll take what’s coming like a man.
A Paris, too, old storied Troy once had:
the pretty boy went early to the bad.
And here’s my zeppelin, filled with fireproof helium,
bombing the buildings of a later Ilium.
Stands forth no Hector from those timid fillies?
Wrath is at hand—for here am I, Achilles!
Paris fares forth today, quitting his lair
where lavender still hangs upon the air;
let’s ride a twopenny section on his glory-bus
(carmina quae scribuntur aquae potoribus)
and off we go, behind his willing feet,
to look for Maori ghosts in Manners Street,
or since we have at hand no southern Ardens
to woo his themes in the botanic gardens.
—But who are these, beribboned and befrilled?
Oh can it be the ladies’ sewing guild?
But no, they follow Paris—it is clear
these are his sheep, and he their pastor dear.
Our lady poets these: hermaphroditic
he is at once their guide, their friend, their critic.
And with them go a few who by their faces
should be in shoulder-straps instead of braces.
But never mind, they’re young—it would be drastic
to make them keep their pants up by elastic.
Let’s go with them (but promise to be good!)
and hold platonic picnic in the wood.
See where he leads this little poet band,
trekking ahead to spy the choicest land,
turning a most industrious rural valley
into a sort of Scout and Girl Guide rally.
He sees a farmer (on a mortgaged farm)
and semaphores his sentiments. His arm
beckons the nymphs who more sedately follow,
and in great gulps the scenery they swallow;
out come their notebooks, down go pretty phrases,
up comes the farmer, very blankly gazes,
and then invites them all to get to blazes.
So off they go again, a poet’s progress
to seek a fairyland where lives no ogress
sorcerer, wizard or witch—these little Trixies
are more at home among the elves or pixies.
But hark, what sound is that! ‘Hark, hark the lark,’
quotes Paris then portentous. What a nark
to find another unpoetic factor:
upon the scene there comes a noisy tractor
and puts them all to rout. Their lark, a sparrow,
comes down to earth and perches on a barrow.
*
Paris, good fellow, sponsors all their verse,
rejects the better and accepts the worse
(that line comes straight from Socrates, I’ll swear!
—If Paris knows his Plato, he’ll know where),
a chimney-sweep who’ll garner from its cranny
the fireside verse of any rhyming granny,
and when that’s done, with industry does he
solicit praise from critics oversea
who tell him solemnly (ye heavens, groan!)
our poetry’s as good as England’s own.
Tennyson or Browning, also Keats or Shelley,
can be outdone by any high-school Nellie
—you’ve only got to open wide your mouth
and you’ll become a Shakespeare of the South!
You’ll beat the English moderns, at the least,
for they’ve rushed off to hunt the Blatant Beast
of politics or war—the nightingale
they have abandoned to the Daily Mail;
wherefore the critic of the
queasy gut
utters a loud admonitory ‘Tut!’
and yearns to where (praise be!) Zealandia’s daughters
have turned to lemonade great Taupo’s waters.
—And Paris now, Maecenas of the story,
sits in an aura of reflected glory.
Call it half-time, while Paris wipes his eyes:
I’ve scored a dozen pretty easy tries
and I’m not puffed—so I’ll describe my Muse,
a lady some respect and some abuse.
I won’t deceive you—she’s a shrew (but ah
the nicest sort of women always are).
She leads you on, and then she lets you down,
she gives you all, and then she does you brown.
Mostly as hard as nails, she yet reveals
a most preposterous weakness for ideals.
She loves her friends, yet has confessed
she’d scrap the lot to make a single jest.
But most of all she loves a rousing fight
—in Russia she becomes a Trotskyite,
in Germany she’d want to be a Jew,
among the Irish—well, she’s Irish too!
*
But back to Paris: we have yet to feature
a lot of facts about this little creature.
People may say, Leave him alone you bully;
he’s nothing more than just a little woolly;
he does no harm; he merely reads and writes;
he sinks to no great depths, touches no heights;
leave him alone! To which I’d like to say,
Don’t interrupt, let’s have our bit of play.
He started it, and I’m no compromiser,
he soaped the vent, and I’m the boiling geyser.
—How will he answer back, is what I wonder.
Not in a voice as terrible as thunder,
for Paris likes his literature to be
as well-turned out and manicured as he;
and never does his Muse, a lady pale,
come roaring up the road in search of ale;
oh, she is very much the female gender,
preferring little gems and safe agenda
to great flawed stones, and a poetic splendour.
Or one could say, a herbalist is he
(apply to him: all consultations free)
who’ll give you little packages and potions
to regulate the true poetic motions.
Let him prescribe, for any sickness rife:
he’ll take away the nasty taste of life.
Above all else, he finds himself fastidious
—he just ignores the things that make life hideous.
He would not serve the Muses as a lackey
where dung lies deep, as in, say, Taranaki.
To coalmine themes he’d never tune his lyre:
he only wants the pictures in the fire.
And lots of little jobs about the farm
he finds are lacking in poetic charm;
for instance, little piggies have to be—
but no, I’ve got poor Paris up a tree:
to make him sick would make him sick on me
—I’ll spare the first procedures that are taken
to turn our little piggies into bacon.
But why should Paris block his dainty ears?
—It’s what he’s done to literature for years.
*
Strangely enough, we’ve poets in the land
whom Paris doesn’t know, or understand.
No Shakespeares these—they’d be the last to boast
that they’re in league with even Marlowe’s ghost.
But they can leap a five-barred gate of rhyme
and still can keep on whistling all the time,
while Paris and his valiant spinster crew
assault a common stile and then cry ‘Phew!’
and cannot mention poetry or art
unless they put a hand upon their heart.
Among them, though, there’s one who’s fairly good,
a desolated star, a Robin Hood
who ranges round among the greenwood trees
from classic style to rabid journalese,
who turns her pen from sonnet or from ballad
to gossip pars, or recipes for salad.
A pity she should lack a sense of humour;
if she is roused, beware! she’s like a puma
this lassie who is never quite the same
without her daily teaspoonful of fame.
But let her be—she’s still a giddy gel;
if she keeps on she should do fairly well.
*
Paris is last a critic. Turn, my pen,
to criticise this lesser breed of men.
We’ve far too many critics—all bow-wowsers
who pump up praise from platitudinous bowsers,
inflate flat tyres, wipe windscreens, quickly jump
to pour their oil in anybody’s sump.
Our local critics cut most curious capers:
they search for truth, yet work for daily papers.
They’re something strange, a kind of currant bun
of journalese and poetry in one.
The magpies and the starlings of the race,
there’s nothing that their efforts don’t deface.
Eaten alive by advertising vermin
they ‘do’ an Empire Special, or a sermon,
duly report the Drainage Board’s agenda,
and then begin reviewing Yeats or Spender.
It’s hard to have to earn your daily bread
by most grotesquely standing on your head,
but Paris is one who does it all for love;
his true reward is waiting up above.
He’ll take his place among the angel band,
a volume of BEST POEMS in his hand.
*
All right, you trollop Muse, call it a day;
we’ve had our fun, we’ve said our little say.
And if the thing’s a trifle, quickly done,
they can’t object to clean and wholesome fun.
But ah, sweet Paris, how it must have hurt you
to find me making fun of all your virtue.
I’ve made a hole in your Arcadian thatches
—if you don’t like it, here’s a box of matches!
Revile my name, in any way you like:
no wicked words can knock me off my bike,
and should you boot me back, let me announce
I’m like a football in the way I bounce.
(1937)
Denis Glover, ‘Sings Harry’
Songs
I
These songs will not stand—
The wind and the sand will smother.
Not I but another
Will make songs worth the bother:
The rimu or kauri he,
I’m but the cabbage tree,
Sings Harry to an old guitar.
II
If everywhere in the street
Is the indifferent, the accustomed eye
Nothing can elate,
It’s nothing to do with me,
Sings Harry in the wind-break.
To the north are islands like stars
In the blue water
And south, in that crystal air,
The ice-floes grind and mutter,
Sings Harry in the wind-break.
At one flank old Tasman, the boar,
Slashes and tears,
And the other Pacific’s sheer
Mountainous anger devours,
Sings Harry in the wind-break.
From the cliff-top a boy
Felt that great motion,
And pupil to the horizon’s eye
Grew wide with vision,
Sings Harry in the wind-break.
But grew to own fences barbed
Like the words of a quarrel;
And the sea never disturbed
Him fat as
a barrel,
Sings Harry in the wind-break.
Who once would gather all Pacific
In a net wide as his heart
Soon is content to watch the traffic
Or lake waves breaking short,
Sings Harry in the wind-break.
III
When I am old
Sings Harry
Will my thoughts grow cold?
Will I find
Sings Harry
For my sunset mind
Girls on bicycles
Turning into the wind?
Or will my old eyes feast
Upon some private movie of the past?
Sings Harry.
Fool’s Song
All of a beautiful world has gone
—Then heigh ho for a biscuit,
And a buttered scone.
For a dog likes his biscuit
And a man his buttered scone,
Sings Harry.
I Remember
I remember paddocks opening green
On mountain tussock-brown,
And the rim of fire on the hills,
And the river running down;
And the smoke of the burning scrub,
And my two uncles tall,
And the smell of earth new-ploughed,
And the antlers in the hall,
Sings Harry.
Then Uncle Jim was off to the wars
With a carbine at his saddle
And was killed in the Transvaal
—I forget in just what battle.
And Uncle Simon left the farm
After some wild quarrel,
Rolled his blanket and rode off
Whistling on his sorrel.
My father held to the land
Running good cattle there,
And I grew up like a shaggy steer
And as swift as a hare
While the river ran down.
But that was long ago
When the hawk hovered over the hill
And the deer lifted their heads
And a boy lay still
By the river running down,
Sings Harry.
Once the Days
Once the days were clear
Like mountains in water,
The mountains were always there
And the mountain water;
And I was a fool leaving
Good land to moulder,
Leaving the fences sagging
And the old man older
To follow my wild thoughts
Away over the hill,
Where there is only the world
And the world’s ill,
Sings Harry.
Lake, Mountain, Tree
Water brimmed against the shore
Oozing among the reeds,
And looking into the lake I saw
Myself and mountains and weeds.
From the crystal uttermost ridge
Dwarfed was the river’s course;
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 53