Museum

Nicole Page-Smith, photographs, 2013

Universal Nature's impulse was to create an orderly 

world. It follows, then, that everything now happening must

follow a logical sequence; if it were not so, the prime purpose

towards which the impulses of the World-Reason are directed

would be an irrational one. Remembrance of this will help

you to face many things more calmly.

Marcus Aurelius

Church Windows

Nicole Page-Smith, photographs, 2013

Of Ascent

Nicole Page-Smith, 2013

O wind blowing

O wind blowing from the grave of stars

Wind of dissolution, wind of creation

O breath life-instinct from the lips of God

I am overwhelmed by a truth clear as water

A truth eternal as life is eternal.

Under the sodden pines I have lain and listened

To the voice of quiet death speaking from air and branches

Inexpressibly mournful, inexpressibly still

Wind-music, sea-music.

I looked to my feet and among the rotted needles

Saw hyacinths bloom.

By the river I stood and saw the sunbeaten waves

Run landward bent by the current. Tremulous fish

Move living among the eddies of death

Death only to those who see death in the scarab

Death in the living snow.

No barren cycle is this

No grave of stars forever more lifeless

Rather a truth living, incomprehensible

Clear with the clearness and opaqueness of water.

1943-1944

by

James K. Baxter

First Church

Nicole Page-Smith, 2013

A DOUBT

I do not know

when I was told

that men must go

to glut the mould

Oh was I told

or did I know 

I must grow old

and earthward go?

I cannot say

if youth knows or learns

that man the clay

to clay returns.

by

R. A. K. Mason

Pacifica

Nicole Page-Smith, 2013

Hotel Pacific

Firewalkers' flame flicker

in the gourds of tourist skulls;

leaf shadows make pillows a chart.

Garlands wear out their welcome;

mosquitoes whine like Cupid's bad dart.

Dengue fever travels by Fed-Ex jet,

but cargo cult diplomats still flee

the Hotel Pacific slowly.

Lizards cough beneath the floors;

guitars twang from wire-screen doors.

Pink cloud skims the horizon,

beer froth tips on glassy lager.

Viewed from the hotel verandah,

the ocean does crash-dive manoeuvres;

blow-flies crawl the grubby louvres.

Chewed cubs of banknotes are flung

where harems of ships' sirens once sung.

Private agents of secret powers 

suspend dreams of freedom

for children who gather hibiscus flowers.

Shark-callers feed the fiery furnace

with a chopped-down forest of Jonahs,

and the helix of the tribe twists

between the crests of firewalkers,

until rain starts to fall with a hiss.

Hotel Pacific, washed up in a shopping mall,

trawls into the neon glare of it all.

On the beach a military band

is searching carefully for the lost chord,

as laughter of raindrops snorkels into sand.

by 

David Eggleton

Another II

Nicole Page-Smith, Another series, Photographs, 2013

Kitten

the phone didn't ring

yesterday.

it never even looked like

starting

and no letters've come

today, either -- except

a stray kitten

i have given it milk;

it has adopted me

we've had a brief talk 

about his mum? his dad?

you might say it was

a one-sided chat about cats:

but nothing's come of it

kitten knows only two

words and one of them is:

slurp

it is making love to my

feet: it understands

my loneliness . . . miaow?

by

Hone Tuwhare

Another

Nicole Page-Smith, Another, 2013

The Cat of Habit

The cat of habit

knows the place by heart

or at least by space, scent, direction, bulk,

by shadow and light

moonlight starlight sunlight

and where to nest in each

with a three-focussed shut eye

on who or what's coming and going 

on the earth and in the sky

and distantly, not present, the rays of inkling

shining within the furred skull.

The cat of habit curls her spine

in the most windless the most warm place

shivering a little with, 'It's mine',

an ear-twitch, tail-flip

of permanent ownership.

The cat of habit 

has the place marked, 

the joint cased.

Feed and sleep and feed

and half-heartedly catch

moths and mice and mostly watch

hourlong for the passing witch

for many, unseen, pass

through the rooms of the house and outside,

under the trees and in the grass.

by

Janet Frame