put some juice
back in your
systems?—ah how you value
the tough lover who
keeps you up
to the mark, whose head
eyes language hands
loins en-
gage you, give you
elevation, a prospect, with whom you ride
up the up &
up like birds beating on in
the mutual updraughts of
each other’s wings—birds, a
subject I’ll come back to later
when I’m through with this
drain: what needs
to be noted here, though, is that even if
some things don’t fight
back at once or
obviously, you can still
bet your ‘sweet’ (for)
‘life’
they fight back all right & your children & children’s
children will be paying your
blood-money, citizen—
well, meanwhile, we agreed, let’s
keep our shit out
of the public eye & let’s
keep our friendly sheds, our lovely slums,
our righteous brittle screwy
inspired constructs
up: & then
let’s add some
flourishes, decoration in this kind
of setting doesn’t coddle
anyone, least of all the chickens
whose coop’s
included in the drainage
problem threatening to
overwhelm us
all: besides, we’ll all
benefit: chickens with dry
feet lay more eggs
because they’re happy: happiness
as a concept may be
about as brittle as
demolition timber when the latter’s traced
back to its
forest & the former
to its causes, but it
serves likewise, it teaches us
‘for life’: if you’re
for life you’re for its crazy outhouses,
the corners of happiness that don’t
square: right,
there were lots
of reasons, the practical & the
ideal didn’t separate out,
the forests & the brittle planks
were one, we
were engaged, we wanted
to convert our drainage problem,
transform it, tran-
substantiate it, assume it into
the causes of our happiness & the
happiness of our
chickens whose wet feet
& poor laying rates
rebuked us daily—we picked
up shovels, backed off somewhat,
then we started digging fast, we went at it, we went
down four feet & then
two more, there was
all kinds of trash, bottles & old
sofa springs & broken
masonry & bricks
& unusual quanitites of bones dating
from a previous owner who’d bred
dogs, Dobermans (-men?) I
heard, then we began to get
into the clay
pug, we were out of
sight by now, the shovels hove
into view at
rare intervals,
shaken by
buried handlers
to loose the sticky glup:
a comic & as time went by
popular spectacle: for those
down in the drain
the strain began to
tell: some quit, some
hid, some developed rheums
blisters & trenchfoot, streptococci
swarmed upon their tonsils,
they pissed
chills straight from the kidney (it was
now winter, autumn had
dallied by among
the easy wreckage of an
earlier level)
they defected, deserted,
they offered their apologies, they
fucked off, the practical &
the ideal
sprang apart like
warping unseasoned
timber, boiiingg-
ggg … a sound, I
thought, not
unlike a drop
on a long rope: what
deserters got once, & I found myself
wishing it on them
again as I
plied my lone shovel, bucket,
grout, mattock, axe & spade,
baling out the boggy trench
as the ‘drainage problem’ halted
right there, hacking
through roots (that deep!) shoring
up avalanching walls (the drain—huh!—was
by now fifty yards
long & in some
places twelve feet
deep! impressive even
if left at that) & shaving
out gummy scoops
of clay which grunting
I then flicked heaven-
ward into the blue
icy sky or
alternatively into the sky
the low colour
of clay: clay
anyway, clay & more
clay, the gobs landed up
there pretty
randomly after a while, & sometimes
they got washed
down again by the late winter
rain, heavy rain, which the
roots of trees were
sucking at, sap
beginning to rise in them,
refreshed by those
surface-feeding tendrils, those deep
tap-roots, & it’s here the
story really
starts: not
that what’s been said so far’s
irrelevant, though I apologise for its
disorderly development &
the large number of
seeming non-sequiturs—things
do
follow I assure you, they
proceed, citizen, they practically hunt
you down, & me, who’ve
just been enjoying the way
these lines unfold, much
more easily than how the pug
& clodded
marl left that
drain, landing up there
out of sight & almost
burying one
of three baby
fruit trees (we’re here) which
therefore didn’t get its tiny
branches cut
back before the
sap rose in them as spring came
on gravely, gaily, with me still down
there in the trench
still chucking the odd
clod up & still
covering that pear tree: finally
a retaining wall
got built (use
was made of
used materials) & then a truck
came with field tiles
& another with shingle & we got
together some
used roofing-iron
& we had a drain! Yeah! there
was enough fall in it to get
‘the problem’ drainage
away & out of our way, the chickens
basked & laid, the clammy surfaces
of seeping banks
dried up, the rotting
structures with their feet in
clay delayed their
inevitable demise, miasmal
damps & soaks breathed
out their last stinks of mould
& fungus, artesian
cheeps & kisses of surfacing
wet were drowned in
birdsong, when the sun shone it
dried & when the rain fell it ran away
the way
we wanted: it was
summer, the leaf
&n
bsp; uncrinkled from the bud
blossom fell, fruit
spurs plumped out,
sap circulated with its natural zest,
& one small
pear tree, un-
pruned, went
crazy! was a mares-nest
of wild growth, capillary
maze of shoots & tangled
twigs gobbling the provisions
of root & leaf, starch
& water, sweet open
sandwiches of rotted
stackbottom & whatnot,
bonbons
& snacks broken & tasted
by those bon-vivants the
earthworms: the whole gusty
catering-service
served
that tree whose clusters
congested & grew
together with ungainly health
while nearby
the other two grew
straight sturdy
& slim, sunlight
entered their hearts,
they reached up
heavenwards: ‘benighted’ is
a word we should have
the use of
more often: oh pear tree! in
that condition you’d never
score a single
shrivelled product: well
come autumn I cut you
back till there was almost
nothing left: the lesson
is, effort’s got to be directed …
yeah, I heard
they wanted to build an
ALUMINIUM
SMELTER
at
Aramoana, the sea-gate, & someone’s bound to direct
more effort that
way soon: listen, there’s
birds out there, we’re
back with those lovers, the buoyancy
& updraught of some kind of
mutual understanding of what
service is, of the fact that
a thing being easy doesn’t
make it available or passive:
listen, effort’s got to be right
directed, that’s
all, the catering’s amazing, everything
proceeds, citizen, sometimes
it’s hard work, but you’re
engaged, you want
to keep practical & ideal
together, you’re
for life, you know that happiness
has to do with yes
drains & that nature
like a pear tree
must be served before
it’ll serve you, you
don’t want your children’s
children paying
your blood-
money, citizen, you’re
for a different sort
of continuity, you want
to live the way
you want
to, you want to keep
your structures up, you
want elevation,
you’re ready to do
your share, you’ll dig your field-
drain & you’ll
keep your shit out
of the water supply:
you want to
serve & to be left alone
to serve & be served,
understanding tough
materials, marl & old timber,
the rich claggy rind
of the world where
dinosaurs once
were kings: well they’re gone now though
they survived longer
than we have
yet, but then we know, don’t we,
citizen, that there’s nowhere
to defect to, & that
living in the
universe doesn’t
leave you
any place to chuck
stuff off
of.
(1975)
Apirana Taylor, ‘The Womb’
Your fires burnt my forests
leaving only the charred bones
of totara rimu and kahikatea
Your ploughs like the fingernails
of a woman scarred my face
It seems I became a domestic giant
But in death
you settlers and farmers
return to me
and I suck on your bodies
as if they are lollipops
I am the land
the womb of life and death
Ruamoko the unborn god
rumbles within me
and the fires of Ruapehu still live
(1979)
Brian Turner, ‘The Initiation’
Use a decent length of No. 8:
make sure you get it in deep, right
to the back of the burrow
if you have to.
Push and probe
until you feel the bastard
trying to squirm out of the way
then when you feel you’ve got it cornered
shove it in
and twist like hell
until you’ve got the bastard
really wound up
tight (it’ll
squeal a bit) then
pull it out slowly
like you were pulling a lamb
from an old ewe’s cunt,
then grab it
and break the bastard’s neck
the foreman said.
It wasn’t that easy.
(1978)
Kevin Ireland, ‘Animals and Engines’
thin animals depended
on our pity
we picked up haggard coughy cats
stray spiny mongrels
fed them on oil
and milk and boiled meat
brushed them
smeared ointment on their sores
coaxed them into old pullovers
and wept for them
but cows could see no use in us
fat ponderous and rhythmical
they were like engines
which could be taken for granted
knocked about and left out in the rain
part of the reliable machinery
which turned grass into cream
day after day and kept the country going
and though we were usually
bustled away from sickness and death
once we were taken for a treat
to see a dying cow
it couldn’t possibly have hurt
she was propped up stiffly
dumb puffy preposterous stunned
a bloated device of seething mulch
a seized-up ugly boneless thing
generating gas
bursting with stinks
explosive
her tongue protruding like a fuse
he took a knife
and waved the blade through flame
wait for the bang he said
we hunched and giggled
blocking our ears
screwing up our eyes
fatness is funny
he stabbed her
but there was no blast
no bellow
there was just a kind of dry gargle
from her punctured side
then the gas was gone
her moving parts unlocked
she wobbled knelt and folded up
a trembling skinny shriveled beast
she was alive
her eyes were sad and pleading
and we began to cry
she’ll be alright he said
hurrying us out
she never felt a thing
even Henry Ford couldn’t invent
an engine you could fix as easy
as these mobile compost heaps
yet the knife had ruined something
she ballooned again
the incision festered
and the vet was called
but all he could do
was make arrangements
for someone to come and ca
rt her off
a load of scrap
we hung about
till we could ask the vet
if he would help our newest cat
he said it was a waste of his time
and our money and drowning
was the best cure
but still he took him from our arms
dropped him in a sugar-bag
tied it to stop him clawing
and through a slit he lanced
the bag of pus upon his side
his cries were pitiful
he was so thin
and even vets are vulnerable
he sent a bill
for coming to that fat and silent cow
he cured our cat for nothing
(1974)
Ruth Dallas, ‘Pioneer Woman with Ferrets’
Preserved in film,
As under glass,
Her waist nipped in,
Skirt and sleeves
To ankle, wrist,
Voluminous
In the wind,
Hat to protect
Her Victorian complexion,
Large in the tussock
She looms,
Startling as a moa.
Unfocussed,
Her children
Fasten wire-netting
Round close-set warrens,
And savage grasses
That bristle in a beard
From the rabbit-bitten hills.
She is monumental
In the treeless landscape.
Nonchalantly she swings
In her left hand
A rabbit,
Bloodynose down.
In her right hand a club.
(1976)
Allen Curnow, ‘A Balanced Bait in Handy Pellet Form’
Fluent in all the languages dead or living,
the sun comes up with a word of worlds all spinning
in a world of words, the way the mountain answers
to its name and that’s the east and the sea das meer,
la mer, il mare Pacifico, and I am on my way to school
barefoot in frost beside the metalled road
which is beside the railway beside the water-race,
all spinning into the sun and all exorbitantly
expecting the one and identical, the concentric,
as the road, the rail, the water, and the bare feet run
eccentric to each other. Torlesse, no less,
first mountain capable of ice, joined the pursuit,
at its own pace revolved in a wintry blue
foot over summit, snow on each sunlit syllable,
taught speechless world-word word-world’s ABC.
Because light is manifest by what it lights,
ladder-fern, fingernail, the dracophyllums
have these differing opacities, translucencies;
mown grass diversely parched is a skinned ‘soul’
which the sun sloughed; similarly the spectral purples
perplexing the drab of the dugover topsoil
explain themselves too well to be understood.
There’s no warmth here. The heart pulsates
to a tune of its own, and if unisons happen
how does anyone know? Dead snails
have left shells, trails, baffled epigraphy
and excreta of such slow short lives,
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 95