moieties*
*occasional pieces, close, and timely
a small requiem for Beanie
We are somewhere
In the middle of nowhere
Dreaming of arriving
Under the century's
Black sun
A rock eye, an eye running with water
We are somewhere
The last eyes ever to see it
Will be closing soon
Somehow
We are repeating
A journey - never completed
We are closing now the lids
We are sealing tight the light
The mind's apprehension wants
Goes wanting
Goes
The last eyes ever – go
Sea-water
Catches in a pool, we are
We want
Each other – at least
The wall complete – the war over
The wall overcome
And everything
Turning in a circle
The sea alight with shrimps
Fire in the straw
Anemones' vermilion
Mercury dolphins
Say it to god's eye
Say it to his face
It is the middle of nowhere
The place life leaves
A circle of rock
Overcome by every tide
Separate, separated
Divided, divide the sun
The star
The light
A ring of light around the sun
And the night
Find love – before memory
And before love – memory
The place life leaves
But for this
But for the excellence of this
We live in little rooms
Dreaming of arriving
Somewhere
And the last eyes ever to see it
Close
Under the century's
Black sun
The mind's apprehension
Goes
The last eyes
Ever
Stay
Go.
(Davina Whitehouse, 1912 – Christmas Day 2002)
Troy, in memoriam
The boy in the river said,
‘Do you like riddles?’
on Wednesday, the day Troy died.
We will not forget him.
The river had a mouth
but could not speak.
In the riddle, the river had a bed
but did not sleep,
and banks with no money,
not much …
We heard the broom seeds
clicking in the sunlight
and the stones in its pockets.
Troy had a piece of string,
a pocket-knife, a phone charger,
and an emergency USB cable
in his pockets.
When he took them out
to show us
we saw he also had some stones.
We will not forget him.
He said, I have exactly
what is necessary.
The only thing
for which there was no use
was the stones.
But if you included them
he had everything you’d ever need.
Troy had been in Nikki’s life
a long time before.
We will not forget him.
‘He loved you, Nikki.
He really, really did.
He couldn’t say enough about you.
He really loved you,’
said the friend who saw him last,
Simon, at his funeral.
Many years later he reappeared
and they were together for a year.
Just a year.
It was long enough to make a family
with Levi and Nemo,
the two boys she had with Tim,
and to repair their hearts and
give them hope.
‘He was a strong man.
He was a brave man.
He was a very cheeky man,’
said Nikki’s brother, Splash, in Maori.
He wrote the karakia for Troy and
in it he said we were Troy’s family,
to protect us,
as if calling on the Gods
might be viewed by them as an
aggressive act.
Splash’s prayer
ended with, ‘We will not forget him.’
We will not.
Nikki’s boys were not there
to remember,
to remember Troy,
neither to grieve for and mourn him,
nor join their mother and sit beside her
and give her strength
because their father, Tim,
wouldn’t allow them to attend.
Troy had a past, from which
he stopped running
when he met Nikki.
They lived together as a family.
He was teaching Levi and Nemo
to be gentlemen, said Nikki.
Because he’d become a gentle man.
She said: ‘He promised me
he’d be with me until the day he died.
…
He honoured his promise to me.’
This was not one of his jokes,
although it was as literal,
and, like a magic trick,
Do you like magic tricks?
it had taken practice and patience to learn.
It was the trick of
bridging the past and with Nikki
seeing it open up,
its facts and secrets side
by side, like riverbanks,
and not forgetting.
It had a mouth but
couldn’t speak, a bed but
no sleep
and instead of money
it gave a riddle:
What is a life worth?
All that was in it?
Or the laughter of children playing?
in the shadow of willows
by all yelling out different
things and jumping into
the water at the same time:
‘Death to the Queen!
Bee-arch!’
‘Tally-ho!’
‘Olive-wah!’
‘I believe I can fly!
on Wednesday, the day Troy died,
with the brave jumping
without tyre inner-tubes,
swimming in the strong current
and the cheeky voices.
(Troy Warwick Neilson,
26th January 1977 –
14th January 2009)
M.
What could be at nineteen the case
is not, because of a haze
in it, qualities
like ghosts, to be born
yet certain outlines
of moving moved, gorgeous figures
nothing mysterious, almost funny
as the floating globe, "My Life in Art"
of the loving charade
and laughing love
who move us
with their familiar
too familiar, gestures
to begin
what could be at nineteen the case
is not
because already a life
has crossed
the immensity of childhood
and includes it still
raging on the headland
in the glow of houses
everywhere around the harbour
and the haze of smoke
it could be evening
what could be at nineteen is
it could be the warm iridescence
in the evening sky
of better times remembered
than to come
but is not
because of all the promises
love letters
in the glow of a climbing sun
plumes of spray
from the crashing waves below
and light and warmth as the houses
open to the morning air
You bring before you
a mantle of bright haze
suffusing all it touches
touching all of us
to see in it vague and glowing figures
even in the day
qualities of movement, of memory
and life to come
What could be at nineteen the case
is this
to bring to life the world
you already carry
in your orbit
what could be
(on the occasion
of her birthday,
23 January 2011)
23 January 2013
spoken when I speak
written when I write
lived when I am living
the air opens above me
only breath is mine
the wind whose hair is combed
whose hair is in the shadows
valleys, carparks, ravines
sharp with sunlight
the turning of one horizon
to one, to one
to one who turns
you see those deep and steep
falling away into darkness
depths unknowable now
even though walking
you have walked them
steps a passage you have taken
to a height
it makes you dizzy to look down
deep bright days
nights you called out to me
because the duvet was off
because the fever made you cold
because everything was messy
a mess of what was in the room,
what was in the world,
all the people
and what was
a gap
a shut door
a gap that goes down
to the bottom of a world
the gap of one horizon
open to one
to one who turns
and taking
a hand
a kind face between your hands
in whoever's eyes
whose loving face you turn to
see those far off for
you open and undefended
places of air
unreachable ever
only here
a breath away
vanishing into a mist
made more of laughter than tears
because we can never take anything seriously
and there can never be enough love
for you
to me
there was one
who is two
now three
uncountable horizons
to the numberless last
who is one
once more
rounded by one
only the breath is mine
to give
because I look down
and the deep has risen
to meet me
as it will rise
to meet you
with its uncountable horizons
crossings beyond number
and the air will open
above you.
(for M.,
on her 21st birthday)
fiance
She walks on sand-white sand
The beach at Anse-Vata,
She deserves the most beautiful thing
She's ever seen
You know that
And you as if she opened up a word
Know what it cupped could name it,
As if she opened up a hand
And what it held
Then framed it
The shore of the lagoon
The dark-blue setting of a diamond ocean,
Cut on a blade of surf
In a sharp fold
Below its absolute horizon
See not a dark sail on it
And no old blood,
Nothing in the sunset
Wounds the sudden curve
Of night
But a thread below
Follows the division,
Spun together out of silver
Of what you only sense
And the essential
Found in darkness by feel
In silence by touch,
A lesson without elements
Of force or power
With neither master nor mistress
Then all the days all the hours
Open up their jewel cases,
And in the fractions
Of a regard
The difference is made.
...
One morning bullets are fired
In the image of a language,
From the clearing
(I have the heart
Of a murderer
Whose ill-gotten gains
You know too),
That when the writing is complete
Will hold within it
All it cannot reach
A sloping down at night
Foreshortening the bay at Anse-Vata,
From such a language
That kills by which
It keeps alive.
...
And one morning we hear news
From a hotel balcony,
The Minotaur cries out
At the limit
Of his humanity
In the bestial language
Of his Ariadne,
She has strangled the labyrinth
With
a single cord.
Ἐπιθαλάμιον
Then I went down on a spring morning
with ribbons of mist,
the yellow lamp barely lighting the dim street
out before dawn stray drunks
and the night dregs gravitating home
through the town with the last
of the graveyard shift and early service
passing without greeting,
utility trucks and delivery vans
brightly taking away and bringing in
and I strolled out in the strong
hold of a new quiet, the fastness of a strange
hiatus despite the human noise
the machine rattling,
despite the animal rumbling and squeaking
of a working day
coming and it was odd
the wheel humming on the wire
its circuit of day
and seasonal circle of spring
delivery van, utility truck,
bringing in, taking away,
because my heart hadn't burst but
lay open wide
in the traffic of the city,
in a pause of no sure meaning,
I listened and heard my love
breathe on a day
then I went through town
trees with deep blue shadows
drinking in the sharp spring sun and
hyacinths blooming
that you are anyone
you are the one
and I was alive in the flood of old young
faces, heavy faces, and hands, hands
that touched a finger to a temple,
to a brow, hands for carrying, carrying
phones, bags, umbrellas,
hands that stroked a cheek,
childrens' hands like birds,
a fluttering refrain of hands
flickering in a clearing
I held your hands
and your quiet head
alive in a way, looking out
from sea to shore, from light to house,
from the coming desert to the city of man,
from a limitless day to a certain room
where we held together and made love
from the love we made a strange new line
I would trace with a finger or sign
but the eye couldn't follow
that I am anyone
you are the life
was it the horizon?
then we walked out on a spring evening
of whatever room it was
made everything seem so sure
the sky tied with ribbons of cloud
and the gold light barely warming our light faces
leaving a working day in its human hold,
in its animal noise and machine grace,
away from the circle of gravity
turning hearts home
now strange bones
joined in the deep blue shadows
like lives detailed under
elaborate camouflage of skin
leaves drinking in the sweet spring sun
and hearing the same strong wave
pass along a difficult shoreline
in a pause between breaths
my life
long
friend.
(for Norman & Bethan
written May 2013
for the occasion
of their marriage)
a present, small piece for Z.
what do I still want to know about the world?
will it it take me under its wing
it will not take me under its wing
do I fight in the storm of it? do I fight the storm
I do not fight storms
and its cruelty do I call it out on that?
who do I tell
I don’t
tell on the world
I would praise who I would tell
and no one is worth that praise
is no one worthy of that praise?
no
that praise
is due the world
(written 6 January 2022 on the occasion of
my son’s birthday)
a gift to Jonathon & Ron
Look at what has been won
and wonder at the world
what is yet to win
and sanctify, in a world
less naughty
but no less expensive
a wild love ties lovers
over continents and coastlines
a wild lovers’ line
led by no fixed standard or star
from this peninsula
to an island I don’t know
of malabar and cinnabar, mountains
across seas and different oceans
a flight of souls
a dance of eyes darting
and fingers laughing on skin
a great and generous humour
it has to have
to land here
where it might have
anywhere
but for what is yet
to win and sanctify, what yet
cannot be bought or brought
but is to bring forth
in a world more joyful for the journey
of this union
of Ron and Jonty
look at what has been won
and wonder at a world
yet to win
through the sanctity
(angels and the saints
come out
why wouldn’t they?)
of wild loves, lives and
gay abandon
good friends, theatre, wine
and song, dance,
to what is and what it is
to be
by the lost faces that
gather around
who cannot be counted
but who count
riches, gifts, names
each one here names
and each one
brings
whose presence here is in
the golden audience of light
is in the hearing
the blessing of the hearing.
(on the occasion of Ron & Jonathon’s wedding, 17 March 2018)
some lines from the Russian school for Raymond Boyce
Raymond sits at a slight distance
across the table, with a glass of whiskey.
He asks my mother to fill it up.
“Ianthe,” he says, where Gerry,
I don’t know when it started, would always call her
“Little i” – Gerry, whom Raymond always addressed
as “Geraldine.” My father is here,
and they gossip.
The pipe has gone. Raymond tapped it twice, then
used a matchstick to loosen the last ash.
Dad still smokes cigarettes from a silver packet.
On the cabinet—it has dark wooden sliding doors,
circular fingerholes; when Gerry was alive,
G and T’s were produced; served in green
glasses cut from bottles, wine with dinner—Gerry’s
borshcht—on the cabinet, which, like most of the fittings
in the Mount Street house, Raymond built, or made:
the glasses, the banquette under the window, where
a dog called Tip liked to sit—the bookcases lining
to the ceiling an internal room, divided from the rest
by dark wood paper sliding doors from Japan, that let in
light in the morning—there is a model. Raymond
has moved his studio inside.
Can you tell, meaning, can you be bothered or bear to,
“Tell us about this, Raymundo, what it is you’re working on?”
Several others are incomplete. This one is framed, white,
with an iceberg in the centre of the miniature theatre, and
linedrawn figures on ivoryboard sliders.
Well, Raymond answers my father’s question, now, you see,
since I’m not asked, anymore,
I can do what I want.
I’ve come finally to the operas
I’ve always been meaning to do.
This is Act II.
For Act I, the iceberg slides off. All the pieces and parts
are there, the figures in costumes for each act.
It might be performed like this, in its very austere style,
like we saw Candide done, on a Sunday night,
with actors against linedrawn cartoon sets, before
it was at Downstage, where
I trailed seagulls, above the heads of Dr Pangloss,
Cunegonde, from the grid, a trapdoor in the stage
gave entrance from below, and a bridge across
the entire auditorium set the best of all possible
worlds above, below and around its audience;
circus music piped onto the street; the
ambulatories with fairground stalls sold
chicken and chips and candyfloss;
Thea Muldoon, after too many gins,
slid under a table.
I hope you’re keeping these, Dad says. Raymond
makes some gesture that it is impossible with the
profusion of these works, the studio full, upstairs
in somebody’s ceiling. They’re wonderful, says Mum.
Raymond laughs. It is a laughter of the impossible,
the impossibility of doing the work and works
we are not asked to do.
If I could speak about Raymond Boyce, who was
my father’s friend, I would say that that
artistic partnership with Dad summed up for me
all of theatre.
I would say that in it met the illusionist theatre
and the interpretive theatre;
the baroque and modern lines,
in what we may call the Russian line,
came together.
In the living dining room—My one rule, said Gerry,
is that if you are staying here,
We have dinner all together—on the cabinet,
I see now these models to be late style,
Everything extraneous left out,
as if we can finally say what it is we have been doing
all our lives.
Theatre has never been classical.
When Bernhardt came to Russia,
they hooted with laughter.
The magic of appearance, of spectres
behind the gauze, of depth in what is flat,
a spectral landscape, figures approaching,
and of disappearance, Raymond’s painted scenes
in East Lynne flew in the tower
he designed the Hannah to have, lit so,
from the front, they are solid,
light the scene behind, they waver and dissolve—
the dead appear—melt away.
Raymond was the master of classical
theatrical illusion: the bolt shot
from the bow in Deathtrap, the shock
it pierced the throat; the set,
researched and rendered
in realist detail for Sherlock Holmes
unfolding Baker Street
like origami
into a boat and night fog
on the Thames.
Because of its illusions—
not due to later disillusion—
theatre has never been classical,
but follows the baroque line;
Mozart ascends to heaven;
a heaven set in the mind of Salieri was
the simultaneous inspiration
of Raymond and Dad to solve
the problem of Shaffer’s Amadeus.
In its theatricality,
it is a heaven we can believe in
and it, not the shame of their
relevance or irrelevance,
is what makes the fearless
reinterpretation of the classics
necessary.
The police leapt several lines
to beat down known communists
in 1981. There was the Merchant
set in the fascist racist decadence
of Venice. Raymond and Gerry were
known to have Russian contacts,
the art books in the paper-screened room
were, and Gerry spoke it, Russian.
Raymond maintained Elizabeth I
ruled a police state,
with spies and secret police,
long after Muldoon echoed Hitler’s
accusations, made of every
cultural and intellectual institution,
of having been infiltrated by the commies—
work that continues under a different star.
Unity Theatre was a communist cell.
Downstage was socialist, and became
much worse—egalitarian.
What explains the Russian school
of these lines for Raymond Boyce
is a philosophy,
of design,
of theatre,
of reserve, when it comes to public statement,
but no less of political resolve, for being
of design,
of theatre,
and no less intellectual for being
artistic and cultural.
Raymond always had beside the bed
a stack of detective novels,
the most philosophical of literary forms.
Before you put pen to paper,
before you make any mark,
do your research.
The Russian school would take
six weeks in self-study
before assaying the human form.
There is this legacy in the bones
of this building. It is a masterpiece
of theatre design.
Raymond’s laughter and Raymond’s gossip
included everyone.
It includes all of us,
and here, above all, the gossip
and the laughter
must never cease.
(written for the tribute
10 August 2019
at the Hannah Playhouse
Wellington, NZ.)
piece for Dave
he knew this air,
knew this monumental procession of cloud
rain hangs in the air
without pressure or promise
but I don’t know how he knew the rain
or this ragged coastline
in a way that was his alone,
or knew the tangle of lives
on most mornings for a dozen years
I saw him sit on the barstool
at Brazil and Rex would say, the wit
and wisdom of David Peterson:
Never eat anything bigger than your head
and Never put anything
smaller than your
elbow in your ear
while Dave read the paper, measured the bites
of his breakfast,
drank his coffee, and he and Rex
grumped about the world and state of business
Dave turning his face sideways to comment,
bringing his voice up to air
from a certain depth, a depth of certainty.
The absence of him is hard and present.
After Brazil, for a baker’s dozen years
he was my most regular coffee client,
I measured my consistency by his. Always
knowing I could rely on him
to let me know if the quality of service suffered
from changes in circumstance—tangle.
The lives he kept me updated with. The years passed.
He never asked to be celebrated,
Never asked for the praise he was due
as solo dad to his two children
for the way they prospered—he told me
how they were doing, how they did.
Had my admiration always, and I imagine
many were and are impressed because
he was an impressive man, whose
good works were never good works and
he kept out of the light they reflected
on him. He never commanded the respect
shown him. A look was enough, as
others are better placed to say, in his profession
also outside of the light
his fingers moving over the controls in the
little light on the desk, wearing black,
tweaking the sound to the precise spec
of the gear so it got the praise not him.
He would not ask to be celebrated like this
but I ask myself what it is to do right
by him and this writing is my work, Dave.
The rain that was pendant
fell for a while and has passed, clouds have
dispersed. I have asked about the air:
what does it mean to have breathed a while
in it and then not to be?
not to be present in it and sharing in it, the
tangle of lives—Never leave a lead
tangled. A cable has a memory of being twisted
it needs time in the heat of the sun to lose
for it to be coiled. It means a
certain amount of work needs to be done,
then a little sleep,
before it is, for it to be, perfect.
(for David Peterson, d. 30 December 2020)
Goodbye, Peter
My own songs awaked from that hour
our families were very close
You know his voice
but you think of him saying other people’s words
and you think of pronunciation
when words are words. I have kept embers of that time
Have asked the wind to blow on them.
Not in Wellington. Surprise, his eyebrows almost shot out of his head
to find me with my own beard.
I was a child who said surprising things
which he saw through. Perhaps the wind will not come,
the voice is gone. I was not so golden
in his regard. He laughed. Had a pipe. The time, the Whole
Earth Catalogue and Little Red Schoolbook,
of cultural answers to political questions, was rather beginning
than drawing to a close. And the pipe had to go.
Not the pipes. But certain words. Socialism. Egalitarian society.
Socialist utopia. I heard him say too soon to say
in the brief gold sunrise before, presage to the coming age, when
If we speak kiwi, if we do, then, she’ll be right.
But I would stay up precociously late
to hear, bear out the heaviness, of any argument again, about
the human element, its burden to government,
when we cast our vote by machine,
when we do. Again have my first glass of cherry brandy, hear
on your headphones Switched-On Bach and
and hear, His mind is blowing!
Who is here to see through me if I should presume to say he was
an actor unlike any other I knew and how he
was, he was my father’s friend, how
like no other, again, you hear the voice and not the words,
what are words? not the song, and if I
pronounce he spoke with his fragility
and his intelligence, how should I presume? without gesture, without
face, with the presence of his body.
Seat, self-
aware, and self directed, as my father knew,
knew him, vulnerable seat, of his working mind.
His angles graceful
elegant songs. A photo of him like this, in State of the Play
resting his elbows, on the side of the stage,
the classroom. So the older writer I knew him as,
awaked my own songs at that hour. With an irony
hurt by its own distance
by laughter overcoming it. And I have at home
A Choice of Whitman’s Verse, ten years after their wedding, I
remember. That day, Farm Road.
And in it, written in the front cover, is
Simon. and a choice for a young poet, with
regards from Peter & Sue V.J,
christmas 1980. I don’t know how they
thought of me. Did they consider the first line for Peter
of this song would be from there?
Consider at that time I was reading
Jean-Paul Sartre, I awaked precociously late
with only embers, hoping for the wind
which changes direction frequently
on these islands, to the hour of the gifts they gave,
in that generous brief and golden sunrise.
That I was not golden in his regard. You see how he saw
through me? to my youth, a child of Whitman’s
who stayed young for you and sings
and shares, with that poet forever youthful, his birthday.
At Rotoiti, we liked to pronounce it, aping the
accent of the well-to-dos, as leak,
Another photo. This time, taken by Peter. I am on the jetty.
My younger brother is there beside me.
News of his birth came
when I was in the bath at Peter and Sue’s. My parents’
game, If you had other parents who
would they be? So there I was.
In Peter’s black-and-white photo I had freckles, a soft brim
hat, old clothes, a trenchcoat and belt,
gumboots. With perhaps no intelligence
at all, but thoughtful, and no intelligence of what,
I am looking into the grain of the photo,
the water and the mist, it is agreed that
it is of Christopher Robin, so it is.
So it is Christopher Robin
who says,
Goodbye, Peter.
(for Peter Vere-Jones,
21 October 1939 – 26 January 2021,
completed 14 February 2021)
for Neill
I lay on a deep land mountain high dreaming around the spaghetti
tonsilled bird awallow
hello on a brassfretted dawn
was a coldlicked clear day
a smoke wisp blue tongue sky
in a hemhigh coat hat combo
say a patchjacket headjazz throwback affair for a hat
shouldering a sky set brick hard
a doorknock studio
on an alley narrow street
a note played till dawn under a lemonade sky
you don’t have to be sick
like his mum brought and he brought to drink
when we lived in a cave
love held sobre steady
sailtaut like a cablecar wire
for the sheer drop
notes like boltcutters
swoopfingered on the loose
from highbrow to low toe
the full jazz
gingering that slackwire
toeing that line link that ear rig
no luck in it
from chance start to at last
out
to occupy the vast reaches of space
I occupy the stars.
(31 December 2021)
