Recently over at Maps' blog there has been debate over, and remembrance of, Hone Tuwhare. You can read about it here and here. I wanted to pay tribute to one of my favourite poets by selecting a couple of his poems and putting forward Scott's tribute poem to Tuwhare.

Rain
I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

Friend

Friend,
Do you remember that wild stretch of land
with the lone tree guarding the point from the sharp-tongued sea?
The boat we built out of branches wrenched from the tree, is dead wood now.
The air that was thick with the whir of toetoe spears succumbs at last to the grey gull's wheel.
Oyster-studded roots of the mangrove yield
no finer feast of silver-bellied eels, and sea-snails steaming in a rusty can.

Friend, allow me
to mend the broken ends
of shared days:
but I wanted to say
that the tree we climbed
that gave food and drink
to youthful dreams, is no more.
Pursed to the lips her fine-edged
leaves made whistle—now stamp
no silken tracery on the cracked
clay floor.

Friend,
in this grim time
of dark unrest I press your hand
if only for reassurance that all
our jewelled fantasies were real
and wore splendid garb.

Perhaps the tree
will strike fresh roots again:
give soothing shade to a hurt
and troubled world.

The Old Place

No one comes
by way of the doughy track
through straggly tea tree bush
and gorse, past the hidden spring
and bitter cress.

Under the chill moon's light
no one cares to look upon
the drunken fence-posts
and the gate white with moss.

No one except the wind
saw the old place
make her final curtsy
to the sky and earth:

and in no protesting sense
did iron and barbed wire
ease to the rust's invasion
nor twang more tautly
to the wind's slap and scream.

On the cream lorry
or morning paper van
no one comes,
for no one will ever leave
the golden city on the fussy train;
and there will be no more waiting
on the hill beside the quiet tree
where the old place falters
because no one comes anymore
no one.

To a Mäori figure cast in bronze
outside the Chief Post Office, Auckland

I hate being stuck up here, glaciated, hard all over
and with my guts removed: my old lady is not going
to like it

I’ve seen more efficient scarecrows in seedbed
nurseries. Hell, I can’t even shoo the pigeons off

Me: all hollow inside with longing for the marae on
the cliff at Kohimarama, where you can watch the ships
come in curling their white moustaches

Why didn’t they stick me next to Mickey Savage?
‘Now then,’ he was a good bloke
Maybe it was a Tory City Council that put me here

They never consulted me about naming the square
It’s a wonder they never called it: Hori-in-gorge-atbottom-
of-hill. Because it is like that: a gorge,
with the sun blocked out, the wind whistling around
your balls (your balls mate) And at night, how I
feel for the beatle-girls with their long-haired
boyfriends licking their frozen finger-chippy lips
hopefully. And me again beetling

my tent eyebrows forever, like a brass monkey with
real worries: I mean, how the hell can you welcome
the Overseas Dollar, if you can’t open your mouth
to poke your tongue out, eh?

If I could only move from this bloody pedestal I’d
show the long-hairs how to knock out a tune on the
souped-up guitar, my mere quivering, my taiaha held
at the high port. And I’d fix the ripe kotiro too
with their mini-piupiu-ed bums twinkling: yeah!

Somebody give me a drink: I can’t stand it

Tuwhare by Scott Hamilton

Tangaroa scuttles whales
and beaches fleets of dolphins,
Rehua flies moreporks
into an overpass,
Tane sends chainsaws
to chew on totara:
let’s face it, Hone,
the Gods are bloody stupid.
They give, and they take
away. They were stupid
again, this week.

I’m drinking Hone Hikoi
in the Harlequin Bar,
watching the TV,
watching them dig your hole.

Hine-nui-te-po was a bird
in the pub at Mangakino.
Not the blonde,
not the brunette, whatever
their names were –
the other one,
the one with the dampness
of the earth in her veins.
The one with the blackhead
on her chin -
the one filling an ashtray
in the corner of the pub,
under the dartboard
that had lost its numbers.

You ignored her,
but she was watching.
At closing time she sidled home
to sew you a suit.
She had to leave room,
knowing you’d fill out,
with Common Room sausage rolls
and literary dinners,
with Kaka Point homebrew
and with hot air.
Years, decades passed,
but the suit was waiting.
You’re wearing it now
as they squeeze you into the hole.

To write is to take
some little thing from death,
from Hine-nui-te-po,
'the Great Lady of Night'.
You took a dozen toi toi
and the rain on
a corrugated roof;
the Southern Ocean
and the walk down Highway One.
You left her a mound of earth
on the edge of Kaikohe,
and noon traffic backing up
to Ngawha Springs.