Clough and His Poetry, James Bertram 141
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&& A New Zealand Qyarter!Jr VOLUME SEVENTEEN Reprinted with the permission of The Caxton Press JOHNSON REPRINT CORPORATION JOHNSON REPRINT COMPANY LTD. 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10003 Berkeley Square House, London, W. 1 LANDFALL is published with the aid of a grant from the New Zealand Literary Fund. First reprinting, 196S, Johnson Reprint Corporation Printed in the United States of America A New Zealand Quarterly edited by Charles Brasch and published by The Caxton Press CON'I'EN'I'S 107 Against T e Rauparaha, Alistair Camp bell 108 Outback, Kenneth McKenney 111 Watching you drift in shallow sleep, Alan Roddick 112 A Descendant of the Mountain, Albert W endt 113 To One Born on the Day of my Death, Charles Doyle 118 Three Poems, Raymond Ward 119 Towards a Zealand Drama, Erle Nelson 122 Reconstructions, Kevin Lawson 134 Five Poems, Peter Bland 137 Clough and his Poetry, James Bertram 141 COMMENTARIES: Canadian Letter, George W halley 155 Using Zealand House, f. M. Thomson 162 The Opera Season, John Steele 165 Joseph Banks: the Endeavour Journal, Colin Beer 168 Richmonds and Atkinsons, W. H. Oliver 177 REVIEWS:, Zealand Poetry Yearbook, Owen Leeming 187 The Edge of the Alphabet, Thomas Crawford 192 The Last Pioneer, R. A. Copland 195 Auckland Gallery Lectures, Wystan Curnow 196 Inheritors of a Dream, W. f. Gardner 199 Correspondence, Stella Jones, L. Cleveland, R. A. Copland, Don Holdaway, f. L. Ewing, R. H. Lockstone, R. McD. Chapman 201 Paintings by Don Binney, Bryan Dew, Garth Tapper, Dennis Turner VOLUME SEVENTEEN NUMBER TWO JUNE 1963 Notes LANDFALL has neither printed nor sought stories and poems by writers in other countries; not out of insularity, but on the ground that its limited space ought to be kept for the work of New Zealand writers, who had, and have, few means of publishing at home. It remains the chief task of a journal such as this to contribute to the creation of a substantial body of literature of our own. Landfall has always welcomed long stories and poems, which many journals are unable or unwilling to print. Some writers work best at middle length: to demand that they conform to the arbitrary conventions of publishing is to put the cart before the horse. Journals and pub- lishers exist to serve literature, not vice versa. The form and char- acter that literature may take in these islands are still hardly adum- brated; young writers and writers not yet born will show us more of what is 'our own'. These policies stand, and it seems worth restating them. In the two awards for prose which Landfall is offering this year to writers under twenty-five, length has necessarily been limited to a maxi- mum of five thousand words, but this is for the purposes of the awards only. Most literary-minded New Zealanders read English and Ameri- can journals (not to mention books) as a matter of course, so that we are in little danger of losing touch with developments in the main bodies of literature in English. We have few direct contacts with countries in which young literatures in English, comparable with our own, are springing up. It was to attempt to follow them that Landfall's series of annual Australian, Canadian, South African and Indian Letters were started, one in each quarter. The links they provide are slight, yet they carry interest in two directions, and a stimulus possibly far greater than might be expected. The Canadian Letter has been written hitherto from Vancouver, by Roy Daniells, whose informed, humane, engagingly personal commentaries on the Canadian scene aroused much sympathetic interest. It is now being written from the east, by George Whalley of Kingston. The Australian Letter too will come this year from an- other city: after Melbourne and Adelaide, Sydney. 107 ALISTAIR CAMPBELL Jgainst Te 1\q:uparaha To Erik Schwimmer Kei hea koutou kia toa-Be brave that you may live. Hongi Hika THE records all agree you were a violent, a pitiless man, treacherous as an avalanche poised above a sleeping village. Small, hook-nosed as a Roman, haughty, with an eagle's glance, Caligula and Commodus were of your kin. Kapiti floats before me, and the shadows round the island prickle like the hairs of my scalp. Shadows of war canoes splinter the bright sea. And I hear on the cliff below the low cry of a chief: 'Ka awe te mamae!- Alas ! the pain !' Ironical to think your island pa once drenched with the blood of men and whales has since become a sanctuary for birds. Would this make sense to you, I wonder. That life is holy would seem a dubious proposition to you, old murderer, most laughable. 108 Pathetic ghost! Sometimes you hoot despairingly across the valley, and my small daughter sobs in her sleep, convinced an engine is pursuing her. Black as anthracite, issuing in steam out of the bowels of the hill, yours is a passable imitation, I'll allow. But where is the rage that terrorized the coast? The towering pride not to be withstood? Imperial violence! Imperial poppycock! I saw you slink away in the moonlight- a most solitary, attenuated ghost, reduced to scaring little girls! The worst that you can do is raise a storm and try to tear my roof off. But why deceive myself? I know you as the subtlest tormentor, able to assume at will the features of the most intimate terrors. Remember Tama who betrayed his friends, guests on his marae, to the murderous vengeance of Hakitara- Pehi and forty others, all great chiefs, impiously butchered in their sleep! How, spider-clever, you again escaped to spin a web and snare him! And how Te Hiko, Pehi's son, glared at him for fully half-an-hour, lifted Tama's upper lip with a forefinger, and tapped the wolfish teeth, crying wildly: 'These teeth ate my father!' T amaiharanui who strangled in the night 109 his beautiful daughter that she might not be a slave. But afterwards, plump goose for a widow's oven, plucked of his honour, what remained of Tama but a victim for a ritual vengeance? T ama and Hiko too were of your kin, and vengeful Hakitara-violent men, crazed with a lust for blood! Who would have guessed that they were also dutiful sons, affectionate fathers? Or that, decorous on their maraes, they entertained their guests with courtly ease? Scarer of children, drinker of small girls, your malicious eye stares down out of the midday sun, blasting the seed in the pod, choking the well with dust. The se teeth ate my father- ate the heart of the bright day! Insidious Enmity I I know you by these signs: the walls crack without cause, heads show pointed teeth, leer and fall away, the dog barks at nothing, whimpers and hides his head, and something wild darts into the night from under my window. YOU-Te Rauparaha! 110 The wind rises, lifts the lid off my brain- Madman, leave me alone! Pukerua Bay KENNETH McKENNEY Outback THE kangaroos hop like crackers Fireworking forward amongst dust. The cockatoos screech their unoiled Morning racket, mapping the sky. These are glass mountains, broad As crystal, sandblasted into shape. The plain is unpolished flatware Not knowing the world is round. Here, between suncrash and stone, Carved and soiled, rooted with Tar plant, spinifexed, coffin shaped A gouger's digging buries a prospect Of hope. Smothers the life vein. The silver pick has rusted. Green Stained the grave yawns quietly. Memories pile beneath the wheeling Cloud. Rust strewn man prints, Anonymous as rain, return to earth. Clear, the stream caresses its bed Voluble between rocks, calm as Sleep. The plain is still. Proud The glass mountains shoulder the sky. 111 ALAN RODDICK Watching you drift in shallow sleep WAS it the speed of your ascent set up such eddies, that hoist from deep darkness, so easily, those elements of nightmare which loll about you now? There, close beneath the gleaming undersurface of your day, what once was functional must turn grotesque, as bodies made to bear the green tonnage of shifting ocean, swell toward bursting in lighter water; and deep-sea-purple weeds, lately held fast below against the tug of tides known by no shore, dance uneasily in every trivial current. There even light, now alien, no longer simple, baffles with flaws of brilliance, quick confusions, as, overhead, sidling seas filter out all meaning, admitting only menace. And there you lie, adrift in shallow sleep, beset by nightmare-but beyond rescue: for should I call to rouse you, or reach down hands to haul you up, then I too suffer the sea's interpretations, that turn innocent to sinister, and sink me in your nightmare; as now you rise from mine. 112 15.;} x 12 ins. GARTH TAPPER. George. Oil, 1962 From CONTEMPORARY NEW ZEALAND PAINTING '62 AUCKLAND ART GALLERY 48 x 30 ins. BRYAN DEw. The Key. Oil, 1962 48 x 36 ins. DENNis TuRNER. Catcher and Ram. Oil, 1962 36 x 24 ins. DoN BrNNEY. Pipiwharauroa, late summer. Oil, 1962 ALBERT WENDT A Descendant ofthe Mountain, THE influenza epidemic squatted, like a speckled hen hatching her brood of death, over the district of Falefanua that lay spread- eagled beneath the impersonal mountain. The epidemic had crawled over the mountain range from the western side of the island after flying across the Pacific in a sailing ship, lodged in the throats of white sailors who spewed it out on reaching the shore. Now it was free under a sun that hung from the copper sky like a judge; a sun that cast a harsh spell of light over the mountain range, the village, the trees, the beach, and the sea.