Coming to New Zealand
I am learning different wordsfor things I have always known
Birds remain anonymous
in unnamed trees
Towns I travel to stretch out
in unfamiliar grids
with billowing hills between
lush with mangrove and with giant fern
I am learning the history and customs
of Godzone, and only partly out of books
Taking the train between
Papakura and the Bay
I hear recorded voices resurrect
old tales and vanished glories
Adventurously the wheels turn round
before they trundle up
to dislocated stations
Here I am forced
to think myself anew, can feel my soul
make counter-revolutions
in this strange hemisphere,
under new stars:
“the wrench of beyond”
In my line of descent, mundanely English,
there are no Maori heroes, no pioneers.
I walk a land
uncharted by my kin,
discovering mostly that the road is there
Occasionally I stumble, fall
into scrub and bushland, or tread heavy through
the warm constricting mud
of thermal springs.
I think of kiwis, those unlikely birds
that hide away by day, dare not to fly,
birds timid and tenacious
Perhaps I had to cross the continents
to find a different self, wary and bold,
like these electric skies,
abundant,
elastic.
© Jenny Argante
posted by Jenny Argante @ 3:26 AM
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