Jerusalem Sonnets (11)

J
One writes telling me I am her guiding light
And my poems her bible — on this cold morning

After moss I smoke one cigarette
And hear a magpie chatter in the paddock,

The image of Hatana — he bashes at the windows
In idiot spite, shouting — ‘Pakeha! You can be

‘The country’s leading poet’ — at the church I murmured, ‘Tena koe,'
To the oldest woman and she replied, ‘Tena koe’—

Yet the red book is shut from which I should learn Maori
And these daft english words meander on,

How dark a light! Hatana, you have gripped me
Again by the balls; you sift and riddle my mind

On the rack of the middle world, and from my grave at length
A muddy spring of poems will gush out.

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