Manukau Mall Walk
I came out of the Manukau City shopping Centre
doing the Manukau Mall Walk -
the shoeshine shuffle, the hotfoot floogie, the baby elephant -
doing the Manukau Mall walk,
to discover the Great South Road.
So, I said, Great South Road, where you headed?
A hikoi went past, marching for poetry,
marching to Mercer, Meremere, or the Coromandel.
A platoon of Hussars on horseback went past,
their plumed helmets galloping towards Verdun, towards Papatoetoe.
The Three Graces went past chasing aesthetic pleasure.
The Virgin in a Condom went past (saw you on the TV last night Madonna),
and I began walking along the Great South Road,
like a train of thought entering a certain state of mind.
As I walked, I recalled the aura of other more earnest eras.
I remembered the sepia photographs of the Colonial Ammunition Company.
I remembered the worm-eaten histories of the bloodstained ground,
under sprig-studded boots and kegs of legs in slanting rain.
I remembered those early explorers who pushed the boundaries out
into ever more mystic territories -
those explorers who navigated the fur and the dust, the tumbling
tumbleweeds, of the vast carpet plains of the empire of the frivolous.
I walked by horse troughs hurriedly filled with cut flowers.
I walked by closets of dark personal secrets.
I walked by gardens where shadowy shrubbery
suddenly gave way to pockets of blazing light.
I walked by the mystery of a bridge wrapped in light,
the spokes of light a sunburst tiara,
beneath which whales swam to a radiant future.
I walked by grain and grape, by bread and wine, by Sunday to Sunday.
Winged yachts were dancing like sandalled Mercury
over the foam on Sunday;
sails burgeoned on the Gulf.
Some of us were elbow-deep in the kitchen sink,
others knee-high in vanishng Auckland,
there where the real yearns to be unreal,
and people are always much worse than you think.
Some were seeking the true identity of the land,
the original pristine quiddity smothered beneath layers
of modern modification. Was it to be found
in geology, or geomorphology, or did it lay
in the very mantle of vegetation, or in the profusion
of microclimates, or was its essence unknowable,
forever modified by the attempts at discovery,
the way an idea once dismissd as useless
one day suddenly gains currency
and moves out into the general population,
both changing and being changed as it goes?
By now I had reached Auckland, jet-lag city
jutting into the sky, town of dark towers,
town of cool waterfalls, deep atriums and skirted walkways,
town of smoothly efficient escalators and rocket fuel filling stations.
Town like a Las Vegas impersonator;
town where locks snick and razors draw blood;
where wristy whizz-kids are able to make timetables tick
and grandfather clocks chime and bong;
where fastidious bouncers obsessively address dress codes
before applying the disdainful cold shoulder.
Town of my birth, branded on the cerebellum.
How amazing that sense of optimism is,
filtering through the ozone of Auckland
to its blue spurs which glitter like a split-open geode.
How amazing that here where happy endings begin,
at the gateway to a South Pacific Fun Day,
the pohutakawa is flowering scarlet as a maraschino cherry,
scarlet as the fingernails of Elsa Schiaparelli,
scarlet as a bonfire of old books
surrounded by bishops in soutanes sipping sherry.
Bible verses are ascending in blackened flakes,
whirling scraps of ash above Lord Concrete's Domain.
Whatever next, whatever next, as the wind flicks over text;
flicks over characters from God's hotel
condemned by religious intoxication
to the delusion of ongoing happiness before their last merciful release;
flicks over medicine men quivering in their sleep,
doing a little light mall walking to a tune by Henry Mancini.
So, I'm out here, too, on the Great South Road
in this pandemonium under the basilica of stars, under the Hubble,
doing the Manukau Mall Walk -
the shoeshine shuffle, the hotfoot floogie, the baby elephant -
doing the Manukau Mall Walk.
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Summer Catamaran
Tamaki-makau-rau, mangrove-land,
whose waters glug against wharf pilings,
shellback tidelines are your stretchmarks.
Salty city hissing between sea and sea,
I snatch glimpses of your panoramas,
air masses colliding like silky serpents,
thin grey membranes slithering with rain.
Subtropical, left to your own devices,
you set a cluster of arum lily cadenzas
coursing thruogh the morning shimmer,
following the glassy curves of waves,
their luminous green fallings which lilt
to the shadowy beat of dragonsih ships.
Heart rocking, the harbour cat takes flight.
Ecstatic, the mouth declares an interest:
to be anchored deep in the foaming drink.
Engines drum their fists to feed us
into the fathoms of the rippling current.
The boat is taking us into her confidence,
showing us the evidence, racing us away,
towards cumulus sailing high over the bay.
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At Auckland International Airport
previously published in South Pacific Sunrise (Penguin, 1986)
Flying in from Japan, their tiny world,
the jet dances from pole to pole
on the invisible high wire.
The paper lantern of Narita is a postcard,
a wildlife park of hotels,
a jumbo walloping through the bald, white savannah,
a high-jumping gazelles wrapped in
a net of weaving eyelashes,
a stadium screaming now! now!
to the flaming tridents.
A whale balloons out of your brain
and crashes thirty-two floors
like a glacier hit by an earthquake,
the frail, pink shells of a metropolis
are filling up with sunset.
Customs is is a Chinese laundry.
A Samoan Samson pulls in the hibiscus pillars of home.
The cone of the Yankee Clipper
Shapes up like the dome of the Holy Father's head.
The sound of it ascending
bombs through the roofs of bungalows
in the flight path.
Fumes float down and enhance
the witness of trees to a petrol wail.
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Under Mangere mountain
previously published in South Pacific Sunrise (Penguin, 1986)
The Indian greengrocer smiles,
a Bombay movie star
amongst his deep-red watermelons
orange blistered tangelos
rain-washed sun-kissed mangos.
Peaches cling together.
Steam rises from the concrete curves of airport motels,
From shower-soaked market gardens.
Cars nose like fish
through the humid air.
The ocean-blue sky unfurls creamy reefs of cloud.
Gentle breezes off the fresh salt spray
sweep across the isthmus.
Leaves are emerald geckos doing acrobatics.
The jelly-green hill quivers.
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