HOUSES OVER WATER
The
houses of Koki stand over water
wave
after wave shaping in vain
their
crooked posts for straightness.
The
land is city’s.
And
so are the men of Koki
employed
as clerks, carpenters.
The
women wade out to the deep
with
nets. The children fight over
empty
bottles along the seawall. Overhead,
gulls
turn for the coast. A boy, seized
by
a flash of wings upon the sea screen,
leaps
skywards, laughing and dancing.
From
the cliff tops, within the sky scraping
skeletons
of the city’s eye, the seas rises
breaking
the houses at the market bay.
AFTERNOON RAIN: CAMPUS CONSCIOUSNESS
for the nth student, Waigani Campus
rain
clouds at 3 pm
greyed
green absorb
matters
of campus consciousness
walking
neath slothed clouds
equatorial
j.w. turner storms
neath
concrete pillars
&
erected sands
to
the halls – lecture rooms
tutorial
cellars – the floors
once
swept by last semester’s
feet
are again dank & inhabited
by
frogs who caint leaves us alone...
the
earth is laid flat
back
aching
on
the green of the now tired gods:
this
is the only begotten
afternoon
rain
laid
bare & tropical before you
the
rain’s a-drumming on sagothatched memoirs
a
houseful of masks & tapa patterns
marx
assignments & confessional testimonies
&
mirrors that promise champagne
satin
ecstasies/solitary lake
ghost
city of the last graduates
BOOK-KEEPING
Man
Friday listens
to
the surf lapping against
the
hulks of foreign vessels
mooring
at the sleep of the bay
and
knows
he
is not in that dream.
He
says:
“God
forbid, no.”
And
he’s on land
cracking
hauga-nut shells
with
patient hands and book-
keeping
eyes, the gathered nuts
gleaming
greenstones and abira rocks
in
the sun.
He
will circle the island for signs
of
storms and high tides. He will
save
turtles and others stranded
by
an outgoing tide. He will comb
the
island once more and cycle
into
town, to the check the balance
of
the day.
LOOKING THRU THOSE EYE-HOLES
once
an artist went overseas
his
father died in his absence
&
was buried in the village
he
followed a rainbow upon his return
&
came to a cemetery
he
dug in search of reality
till
he broke his father’s skull
to
wear its fore-half as a mask
try
it/look thru those eye-holes
see
the old painting/view the world
in
the way the dead had done
SETTLEMENTS
A
face, averted slightly
blames
the tears on smoke
from
burning blue gum wood
the
green kindling bundled
one
day, to flame up
the
pot on fire. Humming
fingers
scoop up sago crumbs
and
the evening sets
in,
firmly.
The
woman by the earth
oven
croon tunes
of
sugar cane days
and
blackbirding voyages.
They
come, one after the other
over
barbwire fences, and on
dancing
feet, their teeth
grinning
lanterns in the dark.
Flames
light up the settlement.
HERE
...and us, air, in the morning
- Salvatore Quasimodo
Let me live in your sanctuary
- Psalm 61:4
I.
We come as our own visitor
To the sanctuary
Leaves that fall
Gird the season red
Doves fly by
Past black and clawing branches
Past burnt out woods and hills
Our arrival is a song
Of a forgotten priest
Piercing the silence
Of this sanctuary
Or mounds of earth rising
The pulse of yearning rapping
Along the furrowed desolation
Of a devastated landscape
II.
In this long-awaited high savannah
The slumbering moura is stirring
The kwamra's dreams are waking
And leaves that were written dead
Are waking deeper than the roots
That penned them. Each cotyledon
Each tentative bud, saves the day.
The earth stands still, mauve-
Colored and olive, a chalice
Before the morning sun.
III.
The earth is the ultimate
In our song of the womb:
The final grace that is mother.
Tall. Graceful. Elegant.
She embraces and shields us
Shows us the wounds at the side
At the feet and hands, where
The world has died. We sing praises
For her great strength, for the bread
She breaks; and the living spring
We drink from the cup of her hands.
From KWAMRA:
a season of harvest. Published by The Anuki
Country Press, Port Moresby, 2000. 60+ pages.
