‘If the crab blocks the hole but does not scrape the mound flat there will be rain but no wind. When the crab leaves the sand piled up and the hole unblocked the weather will be fine. Never trust a white who says, “According to the radio rain is on the way.” Trust crabs first and above all others.’
My mum glanced over at Mr Watts who laughed to show what a good sport he was.
I wished she could have found it in herself to laugh with him. Instead, she gave him an unfriendly nod to show she was finished with us, and swept out of the class into the afternoon furnace where birds squawked without a memory for the dead dog and the chopped roosters they had seen earlier in the day.
When school finished some of us went down to the beach to look for crabs, to see if what my mum had said was true. We found some unblocked holes which was proof enough for the boys, but all you had to do was to look up at the clear blue skies to find the weather. I wasn’t really interested in crabs.
I picked up a stick and in big letters scratched PIP into the sand. I did it above the high-tide line and stuck white heart seeds into the groove of the letters of his name.
The trouble with Great Expectations is that it’s a one-way conversation. There’s no talking back. Otherwise I would have told Pip about my mum coming to speak to the class, and how seeing her at a distance—even though only two desks back from the end of the room—she had appeared different to me. More hostile.
When she dug in her heels all her heft raced to the surface of her skin. It was almost as if there were friction between her skin and the trailing air. She walked slowly, like a great sail sheet of resistance. She’d put her smile away, and that was a shame because I knew it to be a beautiful smile. There were nights when I saw the moonlight catch the tips of her teeth and I’d know then she was lying in the dark with a smile. And by that smile I knew she had entered another world that I couldn’t reach—an adult world and, beyond that, a private world where she knew herself how only she and no one else could, let alone follow her there back of those beautiful moonlit teeth.
Whatever I might say about my mum to Pip I knew he wouldn’t hear me. I could only follow him through some strange country that contained marshes and pork pies and people who spoke in long and confusing sentences. Sometimes, by the time Mr Watts reached the end, you were no better off, you had no sense of what those sentences were trying to say, and maybe by then you were also paying too much attention to the geckos on the ceiling. But then the story would switch to Pip, to his voice, and suddenly you felt yourself reconnect.
As we progressed through the book something happened to me. At some point I felt myself enter the story. I hadn’t been assigned a part—nothing like that; I wasn’t identifiable on the page, but I was there, I was definitely there. I knew that orphaned white kid and that small, fragile place he squeezed into between his awful sister and loveable Joe Gargery because the same space came to exist between Mr Watts and my mum. And I knew I would have to choose between the two.
(2006)
Stephanie de Montalk, ‘Fourteen Thousand Miles’
Raised in the sway
and stiffen of broad-leafed trees,
they had known light
and blessed darkness.
*
Now, they slept
with their eyes open
night to night,
and ate with their ears
simultaneously cleaving
and folding as if
amongst lions.
They saw no new dawn.
There was no stepping back.
Only wave spray,
and the ocean’s halters and ropes
on their long pale bones.
(2009)
Literary Returns
Allen Curnow, ‘The Bells of Saint Babel’s’
1
After those months
at sea, we stank
worse than the Ark.
Faeces of all
species, God’s first
creation, cooped
human and brute,
between wind and
water, bound for
this pegged-out plain
in the land called
Shinar, or some-
thing. Give or take
some chiliads, I’ll
have been born there.
Saint Babel’s tower
with spire (sundry
versions of that)
stuck not far short
of a top (Wait
for it!) gilded
to catch first light
or last flame flung
by the torched snows
farthest west.
Four
shiploads of us.
Under its breath
a warm land breeze,
wind of our coming,
breathed Shit!
Lightered ashore,
our cabin trunks,
rust-freckled steel-
braced outside, inside
compartments kept
things lavendered,
smothered memories
of sweats and smears.
For laters. Boxroom
dry dreams, our child-
hood’s indoors, wet
holiday games …
2
We wanted it
above all (except
heaven) to make
the world out there
aware, if there’s
any such world,
as if to cry
Look! Look at me!
Very old story.
Some other time.
Before all this.
Before history ran
out of excuses …
3
I, the present
writer, that is,
can see the Rev.
F.G. Brittan,
octogenarian
of stertorous
pulpit delivery,
who also told
the time by the ding
and the tink-tink
simply by a squeeze
of his silver watch:
seated beside
the vicarage fire
‘after Service’:
who, babe-in-arms
(his mother’s) came
ashore that day
where four ships lay
under the steep
hills, beyond which
an unbuilt city was
unpaved wetlands,
too near, too far
from unclimbed alps.
Settlers made shift
improvising
themselves. In shock.
Still do. Still are.
Only the games
they play …
4
To relocate the
roof of the world,
obviously Everest
has to be moved—
South Latitude
thirty-three West
Longitude one-
seventy-seven, where
Kermadec Trench
ten thousand metres
deep floored with ‘fine
volcanic ash,
aeolian dust’
drowns mountains.
New Zealand side
of the Date Line
meaning, those shores,
Raoul Island, any
Kermadec reef
cries to the sun,
Me! Me! This day
dawns first on me,
you won’t find that
in your King James
nor Maori story
a half-god’s
trap for the sun,
that sun …
which one?
Which thousand years?
5
Next time you look,
he will have stepped
out of the shade
the West Front casts
into a sun-stuffed
ambulatory called
Cathedral Square.
His butt
oned black
gaiters encase
his shanks. The Dean
of Saint Babel’s
rig of the day.
One more step, he’s
joined by a friend,
silk hat, frock coat,
silver-knobbed cane.
Their morning walk.
What makes the tower
burst but thunderclappers
newly hung, high
peal deafeningly
detonating,
the Dean’s delight,
Are not those bells
Divine?
Silk hat,
hand cupped on ear,
shouts back, What’s that?
and Gaiters, Divine!
And he, What? What?
Can’t make it out—
Sorry Mister Dean,
can’t hear a word
for those DAMNED BELLS.
(2001)
Chris Price, ‘What I Know About Curnow’
Green countryside, very English. And at the top of a little knoll surrounded by fields and hedgerows stands a small wooden building with a pointed, shingled roof and a path winding towards it. It’s somewhere between a lych-gate and a church spire. It has no door, just an open arch in the wall facing me, and a similar arch on the far side, so my gaze passes straight through the building into the fields beyond as I approach. Stepping inside, I find myself in a wood-panelled room, its rafters open under the slanting roof. The wood gives the interior a warm atmosphere, despite the lack of doors. Beneath a window overlooking the gauzy countryside—a mist is coming up—there’s a desk with papers lying casually on it and a chair pushed back, as if someone has just stepped out for a moment. Books line the walls.
It’s a shrine to Allen Curnow. Or a museum, perhaps, but shrine feels like the right word. And as I’m standing there between the open arches, a wind sweeps through them and flips me upside down, so I’m suspended by my heels in midair like the Hanged Man. And the wind and the dream leave me there—upside down in the church of poetry.
(2002)
Nigel Cox, from The Cowboy Dog
When I was eighteen I turned from the city and the evil that had been done there to me, and rode State Highway One down the throat of the island. The city had spat me out; I had been tossed onto the beach where the dead things are rolled back and forth by each passing wave, where the colour is washed out of them. A wave hit me in the face, I picked myself up—within ten minutes I was gone. This time as I travelled I had a vehicle under me that shifted at my command and, as long as I moved swiftly enough to stay ahead of its owner, I had no need of anyone in the world save the boys who poured petrol.
I had learned a little in the city. A little; perhaps too much. I look back now and this is my surmise. Too much and not enough. But when the time came I saw the highway sign and knew it for what it was. Within ten minutes the white line which is the blood of the blacktop showing through its skin was the thread I was following and my tyres were singing.
There was a dashboard radio and, with the wind in my face, I punched in new stations until I found the old songs that been my solace at the burger bar of Henry Stroud. I had him singing along with me as I drove, the kindest man my eyes ever looked upon and, as I followed the blacktop he travelled along, a ghost rider in my sky. Ghostly too was the dog Blackie, head out the window and yelping, and the ragged pack of street dogs who at my dirty heels had followed him. Also travelling was the girl Spoons, whose eyes looked steadily back at me each time I glanced at the mirror, which was not often. Ghosts all and yet always with me; running with me; south.
How forlorn the little settlements looked as the strip of blacktop took me speeding down through them, their buildings huddled together and their men turned away, as though afraid of what might pass before their eyes. How can you live beside a flowing river and resist the urge to plunge? But I have never been in such places and what do I know?
And so I was delivered into those long-remembered lands by the windscreen of the vehicle, where, as though it was the screen of a movie, the mountain suddenly appeared. I came over the crest of a hill and there it stood, so familiar to my heart that I concentrated on nothing else and thus came close to running off the road. The white lines contained me, and saved me. For the first time that afternoon I lifted my foot, as though at last I had something in front of me that I cared to advance carefully upon; the motor ran down.
Into the late sun I drove, slower now, and there were colours so promising everywhere that I had to squint to make sure I was not fooled. But at last I was certain. It was not the colours of sunset I was seeing but the lands themselves, which were red. At once I allowed the white needle of the speed dial to fall to zero. I turned the vehicle around, pointed it back towards its home, then left it in a roadside picnic area in a covering halo of bushes. I took to my feet.
As I walked, the ghosts sang to me. They called me back. But my mountain was before me and I was going to it.
Going home.
The lands were growing dark; as I walked the red was everywhere being filled with black. I stumbled. But kept going; I would have kept going had I been utterly blind. Strange sounds rang in my ears, old gun fights, terrible cries, but I walked through them, ignored them, caring only to see things I had previously known. Then, finally, a late puff of wind, and before it the roll of a tumbleweed. Like a boy I chased it, and fell. My face plunged into the dirt, which went up my nostrils and got into my eyes and my mouth, so that I spat. But happy. The red dirt has always had its own taste, which had been on my tongue—in my pockets, under my nails—since I was born.
With the darkness the cold was coming and I set about, in the last of the light, pulling brush and tumbleweed together to make a place to lie. I had with me a thick coat which was all I had carried back to the lands and now I wrapped myself in it and, beneath a blanket of dry gatherings, finally stretched my bones out upon the only bed I have ever longed for.
The stars looked down.
Those stars that had hung so still on a thousand nights when my Daddy had bedded beside me now spread their old light upon my cold cheek as I lay wrapped in my coat and so alone. If you seek comfort, never turn to the stars. But for the first time in many years they looked like my stars, as though they knew me, and I knew I was home.
Low against the ragged line the lands made against the sky tufty silhouettes of tussock and sagebrush could be seen. Little critters went about on pattering feet. A hoot owl called.
Inside my shoes my feet were hardened by the night chill to brittle things that might snap. In the grey light of dawn I found a tall cactus to hide my outline while I stood to relieve myself. The cactuses are no landmarks, they rise and fall too often; but I had no need of such things. These lands I had ridden since I could steady a horse and so now I stepped forward, my feet warming as I went; my heart also. In your own lands you know which quarter the wind will blow from.
The horizon was a still line. Stepping between heads of tussock, I came to a little gulch where there had always been a ribbon of moving water and, finding it again, fell to my knees and drank. The taste rang in my mouth like a bell. I splashed my neck, as my Daddy had told me to do, and felt the shiver go down my spine. Then, so as to move more freely, I rolled the coat, though it was still cold, and tied it into a bundle that I could sling across my back. Thus I strode forth.
I was alone in the lands.
They lay about me, cold from the night, and as I stepped I tried to read the lines that were worn into that great duststrewn face. ‘The land looks up under yr chin,’ my Daddy always said, ‘so be sure and to wash there.’ As I stepped my footprints into the dirt I listened to the crunching they made. It was as though every bird, every little crawling thing in its hole heard this sound and tilted its head to listen too. There goes Chester Farlowe, was what the sounds said and this was somehow a troubling thing that brought a watchful aspect to all that my eye fell upon. Yes, every cactus was making a warning sign. Before long
I was walking in a crouch, moving low among the brush as though I expected at any moment to be diving into it.
Yet no challenge came and so I moved steadily onwards, following ways that were known to me, though in truth I had always passed here on horseback. I was working east and north, towards an old trail I knew lay there, that would carry me, winding, up the slopes.
In the mid-morning air the mountain stood, shaggy headed against the grey sky.
In a little draw I came upon a cattle beast mooching among tousle-headed bushes, foraging disconsolately, and I squatted in shelter and watched. It was of some breed not known to me, with a black hide that shone in the light. On its rump the brand had sunk into the matted hairs there and still I knew it for what it was, the S with two verticals, the Barred S as we used to say, the sign of the dollar. The sign of Stronson. We had always run longhorns, that would gore you just for a glance, and to see this runty animal, which even yet had not detected my presence, filled me with a loathing that was like a running poison. I flung a length of fallen branch, hitting it as I had intended on its bony rump, and the thing broke and ran like the bolter it was.
As I climbed I saw more of these poor beasts, all of them mangy and dull eyed. They were stripping the lands. No matter. I would soon drive them out.
It was true that I had it clear in my head where the course of this river was going to run. There was nothing in my belly but hunger but I had no interest in hunger. I would cook for myself and plenty, soon. And seeing these poor beasts had sickened me; I could not have eaten. Up I went, tirelessly up, and with every step the lands fell below me, spreading as though there was no end to them. Well, I knew the lie of that now. The line of the blacktop was no longer a thing that fascinated; I knew where that fascination led. The pylons too, had changed their tune.
I had, when sent by my Daddy to walk abroad, walked by design beneath the pylon wires and felt all the flesh of me begin to tingle as though some promising feather was being drawn near my skin. My every hair sang, and my teeth sang too, and overhead the wires hung in their swaying loops, heavy with messages. They were, I knew, tubes, and along them ran a kind of water that was like flowing lava—when my Daddy had told me this, I saw the red anger that lay inside the mountain, where we had once been, after I had insisted that I had to see. We climbed to the rim and then down inside. The fumes there had choked me and I fell; he carried me out. But not before I had seen the thing which is inside the mountain, inside the world, which is fire. My Daddy had no opinion of these pylons, so he said, but I had never believed him. There was nothing my Daddy had no opinion about. The truth was, they were syphoning away the power of the mountain, and he thought this would be knowledge too terrible for me to bear. But I had my own ideas about those pylons, about the swinging wires. One great day they would come down.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 137