Two poems by Hone Tuwhare

See what a little moonlight can do to you?

The moon is a gondola.
It has stopped rocking.
Yes. It’s stopped now.

And to this high plateau
its stunning influence
on surge and loll of tides
within us should

somehow not go
unremarked
for want of breath
or oxygen.

And if I
to that magic micro-second
instant
involuntary arms reach out
to touch……detain

then surely
it is because you
are so good:
so very good to me.

On a Theme by Hone Taiapa

Tell me poet, what happens to my chips
after I have adzed our ancestors
out of wood?

What happens to your waste-words, poet?
Do they limp to heaven, or go down easy
to Raro-henga?

And what about my chips, when they’re
down—and out? If I put them to fire
do I die with them?

Is that my soul’s spark spiralling; lost
to the cold night air? Agh, let me die
another hundred times: eyeball

to eyeball I share bad breath
with the flared nostrils of the night.
For it’s not me I leave behind: not me.

Only the vanities of people:
their pleasure, their wonder and awe
alone remain.

Bite on this hard, poet: and walk careful.
Fragmented, my soul lies here, there: in
the waste-wood, around.

Tagged as: Hone Tuwhare, in memorium, poetry