Poem 253

A pakeha pepeha written for White Cloud my collaboration with Tim Finn that pivoted on the experience of being a white New Zealander …

… as talked about in the show, looking into the derivation of the word pakeha I found that it’s a mystery, no one knows … but it might come from Paakehakeha gods of the ocean who had the forms of fish and man – or from pakepakeha mythical mischievous creatures with fair skin and hair who came from the sea …

… the intention of the poem was to locate myself (and any pakeha) in time and space, tell the story which brings us to the present day, to celebrate the restless energy, creativity and resilience of our forebears and via our DNA ourselves so that we can proclaim our own story and stand at the head of a long line of ancestors (good and bad) pressing up close behind us … it was created in response to quotes like this (also included in the show) – ‘pakeha are the people who define themselves by what they are not, who want to forget their origins, their history, their cultural inheritance in order to start afresh’ …

… this was written in 2010 in the Katherine Mansfield room in Menton which is only a short stroll from the Balzi Rossi cliffs where the remains of the earliest Europeans (Grimaldi Man) were discovered … it was also round the time archaeologists found evidence in Cheddar Gorge that the first Britons were cannibals …

… nicely succinct and elegant in the way it smoothly transitions from stone age through iron and bronze ages to history of the last two thousand years, the stirring tone adroitly mixes in more modern idiom ( my father went bust, true that) and comic touches (false teeth, I married them) to avoid things becoming too portentous … it’s a difficult balance to strike particularly when writing about your race but the whole point was to create something celebratory and rousing (for once) which I managed well I think … when it was performed at BATS in 2012 this was spoken by two actors male and female to make clear the story belongs to both genders …

( I like sewers/sawed/sowed, the bottommost bend of the globe and the white drowned Māui echoing Poem 10 and Poem 156 from decades before … )

My Shadow

Out of Africa
I came
the rift valley
where I first rose 
to my feet
to watch the sun
open the land
and walked my shadow 
thrown ahead

already 
my instinct 
was to leave

I picked up my life
shattered sharp-edged stones
and crossed to Europe

I walked a wooded valley
to Britain
watched the sea rise
behind me
I carried things of iron
of bronze
sunk my teeth deep
in the land
left bones orbits
occipital skull caps
I drank from

the stones I raised
remain
and when invaders came
I married them
raised a roundhouse
a thatch
a castle a flag
built boats
factories sewers
painted hammered
sawed and sowed

as times hardened
the seaways opened
my father went bust
there was hunger or war
restlessness
I took ship
let London sink behind me
and came through heat
through cold
to the bottommost bend 
of the globe

I came on the wind
I carried fire and steam
false teeth disease 
and the cure 
of the disease

pakepakeha they call me 
half fish
half man
                true that
a white drowned Māui
whose hook also
lifts up the land

I must be doing
raising roof beams
raising children
my shadow 
goes out ahead
clouds chasing clouds
over the hills
as the first of the world’s light
opens this land

see it
before you

carry it
in the pale palm
of your hand