by Albert Wendt
(I crap and piss and crap to stay alive)
My War Dead walk held up by the forgiving sea
The spears jab and fly again again
and the dead women break in flowing crimson
trying to protect their helpless children
from spear and club that ended their future
and my lies to flatter my heartless Lord
and patron …
Vela wept I didn’t know how to console
him I waited for his War Dead to release him
waited until he was ready ‘I think you and Palagi call it
a “nervous breakdown”’ he continued
‘To try to heal I fled into the mountains’
(i) The Mountains of Ta’u
Mountains wouldn’t be
mountains without the valleys ravines
and sea level they rise up from
They are
the rising high of sight propped up by stone
earth and sky
They can’t be
any other thing (and they know it)
They are
the eyes of the earth gazing out
gazing inwards contemplating the future
on the horizon line and in the depths
of the whirling retina
These mountains the mountains of Ta’u are
locked arm to arm blood to blood
and live in one another’s thoughts
They hum
like spinning tops or Maui’s endlessly
inventing mind on fine mornings
when the mist lifts and the horizons open
to the promise of what may be
They creak and crack
like old āoa trees as they dry in the sun
and the river dives and digs
for its roots and
fat pigeons nibble the day away on
the sweet black berries of moso’oi and
in cold rock pools atua wash off
the night’s stale smell of sex and perfume
their twisting hair with laumaile leaves and
for dear life trees and creeper cling onto
sharp slope and cliff and the air
is thick with long messages of death
in the falling
They whisper together in the evenings
in talk only they can hear
as the dark turns all languages
into one shape of the tongue and
the ravenous flyingfox chases
the ripe-papaya moon and
comic aitu squeal in the waterfall
They sleep best
on stormy nights when they can’t hear
one another’s sleep chatter
and the wind massages their aching spines
with tender hands
These mountains the mountains of Ta’u are
above the violence of arrogant men
They now fit my eyes and heart exactly
like a calm river snug in the hand
of its bed
I am of their rising
I am of their dreaming
and they of mine
These mountains the mountains of Ta’u
(ii) Waking
Locked locked into the amazed stillness of morning
eyes search for river bends not there
nostrils catch the smell of soft lingering rain
that like a lover’s embrace will make
the mountains purr all day
The finagalo wakes fingers the scope of skull
and the agaga locked in amazement
through its pores the rain will wash
cool clean healing
Tagaloa’s creative breath
(iii) Atua Pua’a
Last night in a dream I was Atua Pua’a
rampaging through the forest of Ta’u
dripping member wildly thick and erect
to fuck the darkness tree air creeper
earth anything
Woke to my flaccid old age
free of Atua Pua’a
(iv) This I learned …
We feed best on words hatched warmly in the forgiving agaga
on songs spun like strong sinnet that fasten each limb
to limb of fale to make whole no storms can break apart
on wisdom shaped by the swift-tongued blood
purged of blind vanity rage and pride
This I learned in the mountains of Ta’u
as I watched my thoughts weave
vine ladders to rescue loto from
the white pit of madness the ti’otala picked
at with its blue beak unafraid
This I learned as I groped each precarious day
across the slim vine stretched from mountain peak
to peak over the whining valleys
where the dead atua are buried
but can’t be silent
This I learned
in the mountains of Ta’u
Aside Two
We don’t know when Vela broke
from the mountains’ spell or whether he returned
to the Tuimanu’a
But in a strange solo of his
middle years about assassination
is this verse:
Watched the flyingfox ease
into the Tuimanu’a’s lair
Watched it ease its long spear claw
into the ear of the sleeping Atua
who deserved to die
Did Vela the flyingfox assassinate his patron
who according to oral history died mysteriously
in his sleep?
(In those days assassins sometimes used
sharpened coconut ribs to stab through
the ears into the brains of their sleeping victims)
Book Two:
The Chronicles of Nafanua
6
Arrival
Vela surfaced again
as a trophy won by Nafanua’s armies
in a war against A’ana
No details about the war or how
he came to be the Tuia’ana’s chronicler and for how
long except three lines in a later solo:
Of all my patrons Tuia’ana Sululoto
was the gentlest not wanting war yet
destroyed by not preparing for it
(1)
Fale Tofā the House of Nafanua has
two entrances: the Way-to-Enter
and the Way-of-the-Bonito
I arrived as a luckless bonito hooked
out of the red sea of war
The paepae of Fale Tofā is fine gravel
carried from Lauli’i in the gasping
nostrils of slaves
I was brought as a slave
nose clogged with fear
(2)
All night to the cicadas’ piercing applause
my fear traced the walls of Nafanua’s Temple:
a lava tunnel centred on a rock throne
with thick-mat floor and darkness
as deep as the unread future
All night my pulse measured every inch
of rock each cicada-song strand of fear
All my life I’d prayed to be invited here
to the centre of Her mana
but I’ve come as a captive to Her mercy
Like a silver shoal of bonito dawn swam
through the Temple’s mouth and was netted
by the breathing throne that glowed
in white fire invading my eyes and nostrils
and down as the heat and softness
of wet earth hatching Clot-of-Blood into
Nafanua Daughter of Saveasi’uleo the Eater
of Darkness Lady of the New Light
and Diviner of the Unity that had been
shattered by war
Merciful Lady please save
this miserable bonito this slave
a simple songmaker constructor of
boneless words weaver of fleshless
sounds
that will not be whole songs
Satisfied to be your performing dog
to yelp into song and history
Your noble deeds and grace
to lick your eternal feet eternally
and learn new songs from your breath
(3)
Her two taulaaitu woke me from Her grip
‘She’s waited generations for a chronicler to
Her final years’ Auva’a more ancient of
the two said ‘You are the one’ Tupa’i added
My mouth tasted again the sweet salt of salvation
I kissed their feet
‘Nothing to be joyous about — even atua
die in the prophesy’ said Auva’a
Young Tupa’i with a future disagreed
‘The Horizon is clear — the Lady can’t die’
In Auva’a’s whispering eyes I read
but refused to believe the arrival of
the Papalagi Aitu and their atua
bursting from the prodigious sky
wielding their firesticks and Book
7
Nafanua Unleashes
(1) Introduction
At evening after the last pilgrims had melted
into the diving light Auva’a and I would
sit in the Temple and let Her filter
through the sieves of our selves
Sometimes the old priest interpreted Her messages
Other times She whispered to me as She flowed
So much to record She said my centuries as atua
never to be plain girl wife
or to know the kiss of decay
Tired of Atuahood but too corrupt to relinquish
It arguing indispensibility
and anarchy if I abdicated
What have the centuries of power meant?
To you Vela flatterer most flatulent
I’ll unleash my flatulence that we
may savour all the ingredients
in the stench — badwind locked in
can blast open the mana-gluttonous moa
(2) Origins
I was the prophesied tail of a genealogy:
my father Saveasi’uleo was my uncle
Tilafaiga my mother was his brother’s daughter
No incest taboos for atua only mortals
must keep blood apart or degenerate insanely
(Guilt has not been my inheritance)
My father was part-beast (eel to
be exact) but no mark of it on me
though in my childhood my scrupulous mother
inspected me for its signs and barred
me from playing with animals
(She should have peered inside me!)
Sonless my father ignored my gender and fed me
on the ‘manly’ arts of war
He was an exacting feeder
My teachers all men he selected each day
from the new swarms of the Dead
(His kingdom don’t forget was Pulotu)
And in Pulotu there was no shortage
of any variety of man and all being spirit
could be killed and rekilled to rise again —
whole armies tribes nations worlds
of them to do with as I pleased
in the killing arts
The Way of the Weapons is the ideal life
preached my father so blind Ti’alele
of Fualuga taught me the swift
way of the ti’a Masters Fau and Ogafau
trained me in the philosophy of spear and club
until I was the deadliest weapon of the Way
(but without penis that weapon that defines a man)
practising my civilised craft from sunrise
to orgiastic sunset on the recycled Dead
the ideal warrior with balls
and liver as they say utterly true
to the enlightened Way
(Is it that we feed rapaciously on death
when we can’t love or know the gift of birth?
In being immortal value life less —
forgetting others die? Is Atuahood
the supreme vice that corrupts supremely
because we can’t self-destruct?)
From champion warrior I understudied
the Commanders of Pulotu’s Armies —
victims of their own wars now devising
strategies to reverse those defeats
With endless supplies of spirits we refought
those battles and won them (never mind the cost!)
From the Commanders I learned the details
of every battle anywhere ever fought
To prove my ultimate worth they organised
new wars and led the enemy against me
Every time I won they reduced my forces
but I outmanoeuvred them all
because I had a sight they didn’t have:
I could read the future and their rooted
dread of death that stopped them from
risking all in the deadly game
Until even my father dared not challenge me
‘You’re the ideal atua and warrior now’ he said
Poor Dad he couldn’t live down
his tail of the beast though he was
the most feared atua of all
By ideal man he’d turned me into
a soulless beast an atua without gender
or guilt an eater of darkness like him
And for a ravenous stretch of my youth
I devoured the darkness like the tanifa
that fearless gob of eternal hunger
(Auva’a will give you the official gospels
on which my worship is now rooted —
soul-food-for-the-swooning-believer!)
(3) Conquest and Queendom
Auva’a said You mustn’t believe everything She says
She loves to exaggerate — who doesn’t —
goodness and immortality can be boring
and we in decrepit old age confess to
imagined misspent youths riddled with juicy
sins and guilt! She wasn’t the monster
She professes How could She have been? She was
the most civilised knower of the future and
every crevice of human behaviour My ancestors
—wise and sensitive taulaaitu — wouldn’t
have established our religion around Her if
She’d been the raging beast She’s professing!
Remember taulaaitu make atua through
dedicated proselytising and conquest
My aiga made Her who She is now
(She’s never refuted that!) Without us
She would’ve remained mere local atua
insignificant destined to fade into oblivion
Admittedly She loved to kill and conquer
(and was superb at it) but of what use
is that without informed stateswomanship
and cunning — use others to war with
and you receive the glory and honour.
That art She learned from the first Auva’a
True She arrived at Taliifiti Falealupo from
Pulotu with Her four magic clubs
and it was an anonymous couple Matuna
and Matuna who found Her asleep and helped Her
recruit Her army of aitu She disguised
as dragonflies se and lelefua
True She slaughtered our enemies
who’d enslaved our district but She
didn’t know the full potential of Her mana
and accidentally killed Matuna and Matuna
and loyal squads of Her own forces
It was Auva’a Leo’o my illustrious
ancestor who after She appointed High Taulaaitu
taught Her She was both Destroyer
and Creator — to conquer sanely so as
to have subjects (even Her followers) to rule over
It was h
e who through clever publicity
spread Her fame throughout Samoa
and made every hungry ali’i warrior
scurry to Her for help to grow into power
First the local warlords came with
their petty quarrels and ambitions
Auva’a offered Her protection at the price
of becoming Her subjects
Those who refused Tupa’i General of Her
Armies whipped into submission while She
enjoyed the watching (It was unbecoming
of an atua to participate in
petty quarrels they persuaded Her
So she marvelled at Her general’s undeniable ability)
Then the ali’i of ali’i the Tama’aiga
came and beseeched Her through Her taulaaitu
to reconquer titles they’d lost to tougher rivals
(including brothers): Auva’a and Tupa’i agreed but at
the price of the Tafa’ifa our country’s highest titles
being returned and bestowed on Nafanua
Tuiatua a miserable braggart begged Her help
and Tupa’i and our armies fought
his enemies and gave him the victory
Tuia’ana Tamaalelagi asked the same
and was victorious (with Tupa’i’s aid)
So did Malietoa and Aiga Tunumafono
Until Nafanua (and our religion) held all
the Tafa’ifa Titles — the first in history
Now there was unity in Her person
and wars were outlawed (as Auva’a
and Tupa’i had planned for)
She was hailed Diviner and Uniter
(4) Ailalolagi
To Her subjects Her devoted taulaaitu
