Non-violence is a choice it ain’t no fucken rule
Baldheads need to heed respect or get a bullet in the neck
Fuck the sellouts that grovel in our face
Remember Dominic Kaiwhata, Paul Chase
Like brother Moana Jackson justice done for self
Burn down that wicked courthouse
Like Dun I’ll dis the Queen the hypocrite
Cause LKJ told me England’s just a fucken bitch
I’m a field nigger a warrior night and day
Fuck it! I’m here to stay Hardcore
Check the Independence Declaration
To state beyond question that Maōri are a nation
Like Crazy Horse we know the White man’s ways
How the Muthafuckas neva hear our say
Like Kamehameha in Hawaii fighting for the land
Like the Mohawk nation take the righteous stand
Do you remember Maioro, Takaparawha
Disdainful Babylon dem disrespected my mother
Check Malcolm X, the heart, the influence
Like Brother Syd Te Ahi Kaa we don’t sit on the fence
Hear Farrakhan I love the voice of Truth
Marcus Garvey well deep in the roots
Like Steve Biko when the odds are down
I’ll neva bow my head to the bumpnut clowns
Fuck fitting in, Babylon’s corrupt
I’m hardcore till the battles up
The spirit of resistance comes supreme
The wicked nah know what I mean
Like Pilger expose their wickedness
Until the bullshit’s overcome
There’ll be no fucken rest
Like Puerto Rico, Panama, Tahiti
You picked a fight with me
At the battle Wounded Knee
Like Parihaka, your vileness is clear
A brother like me will never grow despair
Fuck CNN, the CIA, the F B fucken I
I’ll big up the righteous until the day I die
Like Kanaky, fight French intervention
Fuck Uncle Sams imperial intentions
Stand up indigenous rights
Like the Hauhau remember our plight
’Cause Muthafucka’s I’ll neva lose sight
’Cause Bob Marley told me don’t give up the fight
Ain’t swearing for the sake of it
It’s just a quicker way of sayin’ shit
If you can’t dig it then ya slip
I goes way back by fact of my whakapapa
Always comin’ hard from the tribe Ngāti Raukawa
Tainui the waka I’m from
E Tū ya know I’m standing strong
I belong in this land Aotearoa
Discovered long ago by my mighty Tūpuna
So I’m on a high, dedicated many many years
Fight against the racist, he missed I resist
Blissed out with the knowledge of victory I’ll neva stop
Drop solid props like I said to the struggle
Fed well from the words ya hear I’m saying it
No Shit
Hardcore
(1994)
Patricia Grace, from Cousins
Walked enough, and didn’t know how she had come to be in the middle of the road. Couldn’t remember leaving the footpaths where she’d walked this afternoon, this morning, earlier, before, when?
Middle of the road, not moving. One foot not placing itself in front of the other. Hands not paddling—this side, that side—helping her forward. Eyes not looking out but looking down instead, at two feet. At two big-toe toenails cracked, grooved, blacked, crusted and hoofed. Rusty saws. And at the next-toe toenails fluted and humpy, hooked and clawed, scratch-picking at the tarry middle of the road. Middletoe toenails? Left one gone, right one worn down, nearly gone. It was a grey, sick-skin colour, like part of a nerveless tooth, gaudy like a bruise, like a battering, like a tatter, like a ripped scrap. Next-toe toenails, left and right were underfolded beneath the middle ones, joint bones poking up white, the two bone lumps propping up dirty skin. Then the little-toe toenails had ingrown, biting the toe skin, the toe flesh. There was blood and dirt. One could be the other, dirt or blood. Some of the dirt was tar from middle-of-the-road walking. Didn’t remember leaving the footpaths to walk the middle of the road.
All day walking the footpaths. At first not on the cracks, but after that, anywhere where her feet placed themselves, one down, one forward, then the down one forward. Hands had paddled her—one hand and then the other—trapping air and thrusting it back. Her handful of air, then not hers, paddling back to wherever it would go.
Foot dust too. A puff of dust from under one foot shuffling backwards. Hers, not hers. Then from under the other, back and gone. Unowned. Nothing owned nothing owed as she’d made her way, spoken to only by signs which said: Cross, Wait, Switch Go Slow, Keep Clear, King Bun, Red Hot Specials, Neon Tops, Book Exchange, Open, Natural Health, Sticky Filth, Vacancy, Family Planning, Showing Daily 6 and 8 p.m., Travel Rarotonga Hawaii, Apply Within, Way Down Sale, Sorry We Are Closed, Stow It Don’t Throw It, Greenstone, Shark Teeth, To Clear, Caution Fire Engine, Natural Health, Take A Closer Look, Caf … Paradiso, BYO, One Hour Photos, Conjugal Rights, Unauthorised Vehicles will be Towed Away. And breath, hers, not hers. Out of breath.
Now she stood in the middle of the night, in the middle of the tarry road. No one, only herself. No shoppers now, no workers or kids on skateboards, no joggers, movie-goers or night walkers. The doorways, over-ramps and parks had taken in the pale old men and the dark children who were the street people. No cars, no trucks or vans, no boy on a bike, no girl running—no woman watching, turning her head, staring from the window of a late bus going by.
Back there somewhere she had left the bad-luck cracks under the shop verandahs where she’d stepped past windows of shoes, skirts, dresses, nighties, lingerie, pantyhose and scarves. Past sweatsuits on racks, T-shirts on carousels, jackets and jeans, singlets and underpants, socks, pyjamas and ties. Silk flowers, gauze butterflies, masks and mirrors, Mickey and Donald, good-luck crockery, brass plates, water sets, fruit imitations, crystal balls and bowls and plastic chandeliers. Past hairdressers, photographers, jewellers, preachers, singers, sniffers and paper sellers. Hot bread, Chicken Spot, fruit and vegetables, fish and chips, buns, cakes, bread, pasties and pies, fish steaks, paua fritters, fillets of fish, crayfish, octopus, mussels in brine.
All day. But now in the middle of the tarry road she sat, pitchy-footed, feet and ankles specked with spotchy tar, breathing in and out, huffs and whiffs of breath going to wherever they would go. Sitting. Middle of the tarry road. Middle of the undark night, which was orange coloured, lit by the orange street lights and the spiky stars.
Down, tar. Up, stars. Tar stars. Stars, stares. After everyone had gone there’d been one bus, one late bus. Running girl gone, boy on a bike gone. The lost kids and lost old men had stepped into doorways, alleys, schoolyards, parks, and gone. There was just herself on the street side, walking, and from the passing bus a woman had looked out, staring in surprise from the bus’s window. And now, once more, there was just herself, sitting, tar-gazing—her own black self, one dress and one saggy coat with big pockets, one shoe in each pocket, heels on the shoes worn down and two round holes in two soles. In one of the pockets there was a photograph in a frame. Somewhere back there, after the push and hustle, the fast cars and the buses rushing, she had bent, taken off one shoe and then the other and pocketed them.
When?
After that she’d walked again, and her feet, not her shoes, had flat-stepped over the already-gone footsteps of the people gone—over today’s and yesterday’s footprints of people striding, dawdling, staggering, dodging, zigging and zagging. Many footprints of many people. Her own wide feet had walked over them, foot over foot.
Then at the edge of the footpath she’d waited, back there in the undark dark, waited with a shoe in each pocket while the late-night bus bussed thro
ugh over the recently tarred road, through the middle of the night-time.
The face she’d seen was a face like her own, wide and dark, with a thick frame of hair turning white, and there’d been surprise in the eyes that met hers. The bus beat its way onward and their eyes had held until the bus became a shape, a dimmer and dimmer light on the long road.
She’d stepped off the footpath then, out from under the shop verandahs with her pocketed shoes, to walk the middle of the road, still churning words through her mind, words to do with shops and goods, signs and messages—from hairdressers and supermarkets, laundrettes, fishmongers, butchers, coffee shops, florists, dentists, photographers, jewellers and pharmacists. To do with home-goers, park and doorway sleepers, light and stars, dark and walking, a woman turning, feet and faces, steps and stepping. She had crisscrossed her mind with words that were not thoughts, words that would not become thinking. Then she’d stopped.
Where? Didn’t want to ask where or why, or to have thoughts that lead to thinking. Only wanted hands in shoes in pockets and just herself, her own ugly self, with her own big feet and big hands, her own wide face, her own bad hair, which was turning white, springing out round her big head. One coat, one dress. Shoes on their last legs or last feet or in their last pockets, a photo in a frame, and her name.
She wanted what up to now she’d tried not to have—just herself, which was what she’d always had. Just herself and her name, Mata Pairama. Mata Pairama sitting on the road, breathing in and out, having thoughts but not thinking. Having thoughts that sometimes coiled, hunched against themselves waiting for a forgetful moment when they would become the thinking, become the questioning—the where, the why, the what—become once again the beginning of the answer search, the beginning once again of waiting.
But there would be no more waiting, no more seeking answers to questions thready already from fingering, because she knew now that there were no answers, unless the answers were ‘Nowhere’‘No reason’‘Nothing’‘No one’.
Nothing and no one, only herself and her name, a dress, a coat, hands in shoes in pockets. Mata Pairama. There was a photo in a frame and two feet to walk her. She was her own self, ugly.
(1992)
Writing Back
Glenn Colquhoun, ‘A Problem While Translating the Treaty of Waitangi’
A pakeha version:
A Maori version:
THE FIRST ARTICLE
THE FIRST ARTICLE
I am the boss.
You are the boss.
THE SECOND ARTICLE
THE SECOND ARTICLE
I am the boss.
You are the boss.
THE THIRD ARTICLE
THE THIRD ARTICLE
Now that’s sorted out put some clothes on, pay your rates, get a job and find a lawyer.
How about those muskets?
(1999)
Bernadette Hall, ‘Poem in the Matukituki Valley’
for my mother d. 1995
I know some things
like you’d rather have seen a rotary
clothesline in my garden than roses
and when I dedicated my book of poems
to you, you hammed it up, mock horror,
with ‘Jesus, what next!’
So coming down from the mountains
when Rae asked me what you would have thought
of it all, the grandeur, the excess,
the jade water, the yellow starred flats,
the black peaks with snow like orca leaping,
I had to say that I didn’t have a clue,
perhaps something like what a fuss about nothing!
and now at night, as the comet works its way
across the greybright sky, I see no sign
that you like Caesar have become a god,
you are far too reliable to be a god,
but rather the gauzy face of a woman,
hair streaming, running with a baby in her arms,
saving me again and again from the burning house.
(1997)
Michele Leggott, from ‘Blue Irises’
1
I wanted to mouth you all over
spring clouds spring rain spring
tenderness of afternoons spent
blazing trails to this
place where breath roars through
the famous architecture of a poet’s ear
Rose and peony buds and tongue
ichthyous tumble honey and pearl—
the runner’s foot has touched and adored
wistaria sprang after you, figs tipped
green air astounded by your passage
to the audient quays of the city
Now it begins, another voyage after nemesis
blue-eyed with the distance of it all
3
From the corner of this mouth take
kisses that begin in moonlight
and pitch slow fire over a history of you
reeling in the universe Rhapsode
you and I have some walking to do, some
stitching together of the story so far, its feat
of silence, of sleeping lightly and listening
for the touch that outstrips all sense
in the hour before dawn Look we have come
to the walled garden See how the roses burn!
The lovers in the fountain spoon each other up
their drenched talk stretches the library resources
and when pubis and jawbone snick into place
you face my delight an uncontrollable smile
4
Honeyed learning! I traced her once
to an island in spring, pointilliste mouse-ear
drifting down the margins Then she was
phlyctena in the eye of the sea-ear reworking
a disturbance in my name I found wild choral
allusions and scents that drew a white bee
to not-madness in the folds of her blue gown
This morning the whole world is wet wistaria
battered gutters running and everything drowning drunk
extends a big hand for the reprise
Which comes Up the road on small trees
is a honey blue inflorescence I can’t name
When the gardeners say cyanotis trust your ears
though rain fall into an open mouth
5
She made him a porpoise gills a-snort
because it was so hard to configure that body
The words weren’t there or they rolled over
and supplied mermaids and mariners For him
the language is a woman’s body and she
will stand out in the rain a hundred years
running it back at him Hast ’ou seen the rose
in the steeldust (or swansdown ever?) Have
you seen a falcon stoop? Hast thou found a nest
softer than cunnus? Can yee see it brusle
like a Swan? O so white! O so soft! O so sweet
is she The sonneteer coughs sneaks
another look at her dolphin scores out
the ellipse after his vibrant tail
17
Suppose, sweet eyes, you went into a distant country
mad with the honey and the noon in your throat
a fiery drizzle of rip and glory asking: Where
are the words that broke the heart with beauty?
Not as plains that spread into us slowly, but as
a wind wet with carillons or winter’s cold isthmus
in the azure year, you will find the frontiered heart
and write a script of stars across its salt and snow
Birds that think in oceans come and go, their chart
behind their eyes that scarcely sleep Your mouth’s adrift
with ghosts of fire the salt has burned to noontide
blue Your sweetness ripples through the rain
of a country to which you may never return You
are the still caesura tha
t breaks a line in two
(1994)
Maladies
Bernadette Hall, ‘Anorexia’
these are the acts of power
to give birth to kill
you have a new notion
*
in a monochrome of beige sheep & paddocks
you try to say your unclear thing
you curl up like a wild rabbit
*
living out now in the open
you are the original food
(1994)
Wystan Curnow, from Cancer Daybook
where’s the
humour
in a
tumour
26.7.82
cut it
out cut
it out
27.7.82
Now that
I
have it
(death)
in my
sentence
I’m the
more
composed.
27.7.82
(1989)
Peter Wells, ‘When My Brother Got Thin’
It was the smell. It wasn’t that it was offensive. It was just an old, rather tired smell—of an exhausted building. It was a shopping centre which had passed its use-by date. Most of the original occupants had shifted out and hollowed out refits, unsubtly gutted, still sprouted signs screaming Cost Cutter and all the other illiterate jumble. Even the lighting seemed peculiar. The wattage was turned down low, so the interior had a sort of seamy, endless day-for-night feeling—as if you were caught inside a building at 4 a.m., and there was no one to let you out.
Or perhaps that was just how I was feeling.
My mother had been mad, now, for over six months. It had begun with a phone call—the slippage, I guess you would call it. She rang me and said she felt certain the sewer pipe under the house was about to explode.
I chose—perhaps I had no choice, perhaps at that stage I wanted to believe she was sane—to treat her enquiry rationally. My brother and I went to see her. We inspected the evidence. And even when there appeared to be no basis for my mother’s anxiety, still we got a plumber out who looked at the situation and informed us that there was nothing wrong.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 121