by Albert Wendt
shaping the net of his ears to snare
the lullabies of allthings
In his old age veins clogged with night he was to sing:
We can’t rewalk the exact footprints
we make in the stories of our lives
But we’ll hear again our footsteps
like the lullabies our parents sang us
the moment our stories end
Perhaps out of our footprints
our children will nurse wiser lullabies
Aside One
In my telling there’ll be many asides —
my style wanders but I promise
they’ll all tie up finally to our songmaker
Everything is intelligent said Pythagoras
Everything is relative said Einstein
Everything is floating
We’re atua with arseholes
and a man called Freud is dead
said Dr Farani my crazy neighbour
What’s an arithmetician a dreaming
physicist and a wise madman got to do
with our songmaker? you may ask
(And who was Freud? And what
are they doing in our pre-
Papalagi saga?)
Sang our songmaker:
Through my songs I explore
all my possibilities to sustain myself
I’m Pythagoras Einstein Falani
and Freud I’m everyone
I’m everything
And everything is intelligent
relative and we are atua excreting our deaths:
we can imagine ourselves immortal
yet know we must revert
to Tagaloa’s maggots
We’re holy rock ’n’ rollers looking for seats
in Tagaloa’s rocking band
So c’mon babies suck up and shoot
out the joy of all who we can be
Tagaloaalagi Boss Atua won’t let us self-destruct
We’re holy rock ’n’ rollers searching
for the unique beat of our land
(6) Pig
Even songmakers are reefed on
the inevitable mystery of cock
springing fatly and humming
The taulasea split his foreskin’s tightness
It bled but a week of stinging
seawater healed it
One night on the beach
his penis sprang roundheaded and demanding
He discovered it a onestringed instrument
of exquisite pleasure and he played
it tightly into the sultry To’elau
weaving around him like a temptress
Fia mea! Fia mea! he chanted
monotonely to the beat of his composing hand
(he’d heard his brothers’ urgent singing
in the secrecy of the pigpens)
He hummed to his instrument’s centre
Then POW it spat whitely into the To’elau’s clutching
Addicted he played it nightly sometimes furiously
when in the fale’s communal dark he heard
his brothers and their wives furtively thinging
‘I’ve so much to give away
but no woman’ll have it’ he sang
in his erect loneliness
In our country pigs are aristocratic
(Sometimes fed better than our children)
Our songmaker’s duty was to feed those beauties daily
Kinky stench of pig and mud
in the grunting darkness the moon as round
as a raunchy sauali’i’s testicle
sniffing wetnoses of pig nudging his crevices
‘Hold still! Hold still! Hold still!’ he sang
to his thighs pumping
‘Hold stiiiill you beauty!’ And into
the hot clutch of slippery pig
he shot his gift no woman wanted
That week as he fed his beauties
and sucked in their heady odour
the song caught in the net of his head
one he was never to make public
but crooned under his breath whenever
he thinged woman man or beast:
Pig is best
Pig is delicious
Pig is true aristocracy
Pig Pig Pig!
Pig never spits back
So hold still my lovely hold still
(By the way he never ate pork again)
3
Mulialofa
(1) The Taulasea from Lona
Mentors are absent
from the first twenty years
of Vela’s chronicles
With other heroes
there are narratives of wise teachers —
usually a toothless grandfather (or grandmother)
But for Vela
not even a waywardly expert aunt
is mentioned
Neglect rejection loneliness
were probably themes
of these two decades
One revealing fragment:
Hurry up do this do that!
Quick or I’ll come and slap your mouth!
Watch out or I’ll break your jaw!
May you be cooked in a umu!
I’ll come and trample you!
Hurry son of a stinking pig!
The sau’ai’ll come and eat you!
Life’s a slap here there everywhere!
Life’s a kick here there everywhere!
Another:
Tane’s forest wears a melting cloak of dew
When the forest was born
Some immense atua paced this track
Its tears are on the stones
Come back kind atua
Come back be my friend
And one sure verse still sung today:
A shadow in Pili’s crawling
Stalker of loneliness in the forest of Tane’s head
Companion of atua in the stream’s whispering
and wild boar breaking the bonds
of the Fue-Tagata
Thirsty drinker of dew the La sucks up at noon
Vela is pigeon soaring
Vela is the sweep of wings the lift
of swift sky and the Atu’olo tumbling
away to Fagaloa and Mulifanua
Then out of the sunset
came the abundant Taulasea from Lona
(with his bundle of cures):
Mulialofa Loving-Arse or Arse-for-Loving
or the Arse-End-of-Love
Mulialofa-Ailalolagi Mulialofa-Eater-of-Worlds
Mulialofa-Taulasea-o-Fatu Mulialofa-Healer-of-Hearts
who in a week of soft nights with
ti leaves coconut oil herbs
and incanting hands reduced
Vela’s father’s ‘burden’ to sling-
less proportions and hooked
him on the cure
and Mulialofa became aiga indispensable
The women giggled
the men guarded their rear
and Vela fell in love
(2) Solo a Mulialofa
(Mulialofa as songmaker
composed many songs and poems
Only one remains though)
Tepa i le Lagituaiva Look up at the Ninth Heaven
Tepa i le sami i’ila Look at the glittering sea
O fea le ao? Which is the head?
O fea le i’u? Which is the tail?
Tino o le tane Body of a man
A’o mana’oga o se fafine But the desires of a woman
Atua o le atunu’u Gods of the country
Fa’alogo mai i la’u tagi: Listen to my pleading:
Sui lo’u tino e pei na Change my body as
Sui e Tagaloa fua o le Fue-Tagata Tagaloa changed the fruit of the Fue-tagata
Sui o’u totoga i le tama’ita’i Change me into a woman
Pei o le ma’a taula Like the anchor stone
O le va’a a Tuli Of Tuli’s canoe
Na pa’ulia i Amuli That ran aground at Amu
li
Fia manava mai le malemo Want to breathe from the drowning
Ia maua le va fafine To find the split of woman
Ae le o le tu a le tama Not the erection of the male
(3) Solo mo Mulialofa
(Vela composed many songs expressing
his love for Mulialofa but in my research
I’ve found only the following four sonnets)
(i) Mouth and Tongue
You taught me that mouth and tongue know
more languages than talk
languages subtle dazzlingly various
in awakening the blood’s fire
Quivering trail of lips and breath down the spine
and smooth flank light as a butterfly’s dance
Lazy lick of tongue shaping the affluent geography
of nipple belly navel heart
soft inside of thigh the spring of cock
singing and mouth closing moistly around
Slow suck and pulling upwards
draining all of me to stem and head
and filling my moa with alofa
that will hold me to you forever
(ii) Nose
You showed me too that the nostrils’ gift
is apt entry into the celebrating blood
Nose fossicking from head to toe in hair
ear-round the twist of urgent saliva
tongue armpit sweat and thick hair
splendid with musk and urgency
Over trembling skin pores opening
all the vapours drunk with messages of love
into all the forbidden crevices valleys
circling down to arsehole —
yes I can say it now without shame —
arsehole! stenchhole! shithole of exquisite smells!
Love knows no forbidden territory
or boundaries imposed on the heart
(iii) Hands
Today my spine creaks like a dead tree
and your long healing hands
perform their miracle again in
the spellbound eye of my fading memory
Their supple slip and squeeze unclenching
the luminous pains of my youth
each finger a gift soothing every vein
of yearning in the deep Po-o-Mana’oga
all young people have to endure
to unravel the body’s demanding tides
Hands that teach all the body over
until I’m again as green and singing
as the heart of the youth
that I was and loved you
(iv) Cures
My father too laughed behind your back
‘Like a woman!’ they said but they needed
your cures for knitting broken masalo
and the easily-wounded loto
through your mending of diseased flesh
and the body marked by sorcery
For instance my heartless father you unslung
from the curse of his whale-heavy balls
and he could once again outcreep
swift young women in their midnight fale
and run fleetly away if their relatives
awoke and gave honourable chase
At first I was ashamed to love another man
but you cured my agaga of that
4
The Contest
‘We are the remembered cord
that stretches across the abyss
of all that we’ve forgotten
We don’t inherit the past
but a creation of our remembering’
sang Vela
(1)
The contest remains a divining bowl of seawater
in my decaying skull (in it I read again the
tides of my life):
Alopese of Manu’a half-atua half-tagata born
of the Rock where the La rises and Tagaloa
hatched his human reflection
Alopese the Tuimanu’a’s Lord of War who read
the signs and harnessed the atua’s ferocity
in the Conch’s whispering
Diviner of the Word who fattened on the mana
of defeated heroes the tanifa’s bitter blood
and the ambidextrous songs of the dolphin
Reader of the Future who could lift out
of body as the blue-beaked ti’otala
that cheekiest of birds
It was he who ate the night away as he flew
and at the bright rooster’s call we woke
he was the unblinking eye of our malae
Eyes as rapacious as midnight
tight wrap of muscle and austere sinew
around his talking staff
Long hair bleached skullwhite
with limestone ancient tattooed skin like
shark’s hide bristling
Leaning on his staff rooted to earth
he rose (even the La shivered) to clog
my moa with fear (and awe)
‘I’ve come to meet the one who is man
and woman gifted who they say can sing all
the seasons through into the future!’ he called
‘There’s no one of that gift here!’
‘He is here!’ And his gaze swept over
and hooked our faletele
(People who are afraid will sell even family)
‘Yes go out!’ my family ordered Mulialofa
(My father even pushed him out)
Unleashing his mane to flow down
his back like black lava (such arrogant
beauty) he stepped into the narrowing eye
(In the dying creature that is my body
our love burns again like a togo fire
welcoming fishermen from the cold)
Ten paces was the Va between them
to leap across in imagery coined by
the inventive weapons of the unforgiving heart
The rules were as simple as a spearpoint:
alofa was the chosen topic each would offer
four-line verses alternately
each verse to follow a set rhyme scheme
and so it would run until one
was empty of artifice
then the winner could demand
anything of the vanquished (even his
agaga finagalo loto masalo)
(We circled them watched waited
for one to tire to bleed to sing himself
out of contest into infamous humiliation)
(Art is the devising and disguising
of tricks that make the leap
look effortless magical miraculous)
Guest Alopese was to start
His opener is a turtle’s egg still
hatching in the sand of my tongue:
‘They say alofa is stored in the Va
between your heart and your lungs
They say alofa is a pain
rich in death’
Mulialofa’s counter:
‘Alofa grows out of the Va
in Tagaloaalagi’s magnificent head
They say alofa is a cure
rich in joy’
Alopese:
‘Alofa is spring water bubbling up
from unknown depths of earth
They say alofa is a thirst
that can’t be quenched’
Mulialofa:
‘Exploring the depths of alofa
true lovers will find no ending
Their search is the quench
for their thirst for alofa’
So they matched leap for leap
giving alofa marrow flesh and breath
and we fed on their succulent imagery
As word of the contest spread
all our islands and atua joined
the witnessing circle to feed spellbound
The contestants rested at night
and I would sneak (in our fale) into Mulialofa’s
reassuring arms — ‘Nothing to fear’ he’d whisper
But each night he felt leaner
as if his daytime verses had fed off his fat
and the dreams of his exhausted sleep
Until my frantic mouth couldn’t raise
his impotent slackness gripped
by his fear of losing
By the thirteenth night he was stone
to my consoling as he wept
in the drowning sleep of the defeated conjurer
Next morning under the La’s blade
he admitted defeat and bowed his head
to his lean shadow on the breathing grass
(I’ll remember him always in that pose:
an atua of polished stone alight with sun
solid resigned to the penalty of the game)
‘I demand his bones’ Alopese said
The feeding circle (my father among them) wanted
Mulialofa to pay the just but terrible price
With long bamboo knife they slit open
his right leg from groin to toes
(He didn’t utter a sound)
Peeled away the bandage of flesh
(The malae began to drink his blood)
Broke out the thigh bone
Tossed it to Alopese who whooped
sucked out the marrow noisily
and of the hollow bone made a flute
He fluted arrogant tunes
while they unstitched each bone
from the house of Mulialofa’s flesh
and tied together with sinnet a Bone-man
white as smiling teeth who danced
one-legged to Alopese’s fluting song:
‘Bone-man dance like a dog
Bone-man jump like a shark