by Albert Wendt
to heal his age unable to restore the chips to the log (The
carving is what’s been adzed away and burnt)
Now it’s winter and apple trees in the voiceless garden
await expert pruning to bud again in spring (The growing’s locked
in the sap’s dreaming the promise of fruit is already
crunchy to the frost’s bite that’ll kill it)
Now it’s winter and Sina’s dropped out of law into
waitressing in that southern city that’s as frugal
as a Presbyterian pulpit and antarctic cold that freezes
your bones into bibleblack slate (Walk warily
the rock path between daughter and father —
Saveasi’uleo turned daughter into Eater of Darkness)
Now it’s winter and Mele is bored with Machines-
Who-Think that’ll inherit our future and searches
the nightclubs of my youth’s city for lost relatives
and husks of southerlies I didn’t snare: Sina
Mele daughters of Vela’s prophecies in the unbreakable
circle Time is Time is all here and now
in the unfolding of my daughters from
Nafanua’s incestuous conception
Now it’s winter and Michael’s at Wesley College circled
by lush farms and the stench of silage Soon I hope we can talk
as friends not rivals not sullen son to indifferent father
(Vela never forgave his father though he searched for
him in other men)
Now it’s winter and Maungakiekie (renamed
One Tree Hill by the arrogant coloniser) is ten walking
minutes away but the Ngāti Whātua who for centuries
held it were eaten by war and left their generous kūmara
atua and a sad silence I plait my skin out of as I jog
short slow steps up to the summit the memorial concrete
obelisk and the round sweep of Auckland as relentless
as the coloniser’s muskets that imposed another history
and geography on Maui’s Ika turning the blood
and bones into grass the flesh into bread for
the white mouths of racist generations (History
is for cannibals who feed as victors Vela once
sang in his wisdom)
Now it’s winter and I fish again for Vela
in the Tokelauan manner of short handline
pearl-shell hook slow moving canoe hand tug-tugging teasing
the fish like the heart beating across a lagoon that’s
a page of anae swarming:
(1) Canoewreck
Once before my belly sprouted unhealable ulcers
I lived out another adventure in a strange
country I’ll call Nei because its atua
couldn’t recall their origins or one step
beyond the moment
It was the anae season the sea teemed
with their succulent thousands
We hunted with handline and spear
until the water bled and our canoes fattened
almost to sinking with the anae’s dying
Sickened by our gluttony Tagaloa hurled
a storm against us No need to detail that
just punishment Enough that it canoewrecked
me on a beach as black as an aitu’s fury —
a cliched event in any fisher’s story
Woke to a hushed sky of blueblack faces
and almost shat believing my captors Fijian
the most ferocious maneaters in our region
Reshut my eyes hoping it a dream but when
I peered up again their sky was still
grinning in blueblack silence Come they beckoned
I stood up (my knees knocked like rocks
tumbling in a stormy river) and we scrutinised
each other (my fear was liquid fire that
burst out of arsehole and dribbled)
Ten men about my age totally naked
without scars or tatau or other adornments
and I couldn’t believe indistinguishable
from one another to their genitals
and manner Tentuplets? Impossible!
I followed them over dunes that surged
away to windswept horizons in the colour
of my captors as they marched (more a
dance) in unison with their shadows
cast by the sun I couldn’t see or believe in
Soon in a dense forest of palmtrees
that reeked of dank earth and birth
and the absence of birds insects predators
I had to follow their upturning soles
because their darkness merged with the forest’s
And when we surfaced to sun again (and
grass that felt underfoot like pig’s fur)
I couldn’t ignore their sleek buttocks
(they were enticing!) especially when they turned
and smiled periodically and I glimpsed
their uncircumcised swinging (no penis
sheaths oddly) and balls as heavy as
turtle’s eggs nesting in rich pubis (My mouth
could hatch them and taste the flow of
generations) Must concentrate on my captivity
(2) The Circle
The Tagata-Nei awaited in circles that climbed
in terraces around a malae surfaced with river stones
Crosslegged hands on their knees a silent sea
of blackness rippling out and up from
the moa unaging without beginning
My captors (shouldn’t call them that for
they’d used no force) escorted me to
the circle’s centre to sit crosslegged then
they merged with the observing terraces
Not a sound or movement in their scrutiny
Invisible sun burning into my forehead
without my atua’s protection looked into
their eyes that smiled but kept me out
No sign of children or old people
The women looked alike so did the men
My age in rows alternately Ten rows
then one empty then ten more and so on
until the terraces shot clear up to terraced
footpaths on a bonewhite cliff rowed by
circular entrances into what I imagined
were caves for living in? or burial?
I didn’t know (or dare guess in case
I was sacrificed to their atua whose
eyes I now believed were ravenous circles)
Save me Lulu! I prayed Save me!
My skin bristled even before my ears caught
their humming issuing from the pit of
the belly the insistent buzz of hornets
but unthreatening a quivering chord I’d
heard before but where? by whom or what?
As their sound intensified their lips quivering
like cicadas they closed their eyes
in unison and dived deeply into their moa
which has no memory or finagalo
but in which their atua are rooted and fed
Watched their bodies vibrating row upon
row flesh and bone becoming liquid sound
rippling from the centre in wave upon
wave until their tide was scaling the cliff
and flooding the caves and cavern of Vanimonimo
until all was pulsating being moa unity
and I too every pore of me opened to it
and knew beyond the barrier of finagalo
that they were and always will
be now is together
(3) Our Crew
All civilised societies are ordered in classes so
at the ceremony’s end I expected ali’i to decide
my future and so order their commoners
but alas the Tagata-Nei in rows dispersed
in tens as if to
a predetermined plan and purpose
leaving me encircled by my original captors
who waited but I couldn’t connect
to their brainlinking until I counted
only nine of them realised their intention
and stepped into the tenth space in the circle
They hummed their approval and focused again
but I couldn’t connect so they pointed at
my tattered clothing with obvious meaning
Only savages went naked so NO I protested
but they closed upon me and stripped
my pride to frantic hands hiding their essentials
To a dead fire they led me and in a tanoa
mixed charcoal and water which
though I protested they painted me
with their savage hue allover
To the civilised like us black is the taint of
inferiors but to the Tagata-Nei the true tagata
can be no other colour so my Ten helped
paint on my skin every morning swooning
each time at my midnight beauty
Sometimes their painting hands were firesticks
the sparked my flesh to a furious erection
I couldn’t conceal and they considered
deviant a farcical curiosity outside
the mating season — but more about that later
As our Ten marched through the village
of enormous communal fale I clutched my shame
Other Tens at their tasks nodded
as we passed oblivious to my nakedness
so I let go and swung free in the nibbling breeze
All Tens seemed linked as one living creature
and I asked myself Who created Nei?
For what purpose? What’s their history?
The Tagata-Nei hadn’t just happened as they were
to remain unchanged without progress?
Pigs! Their squeeling was suddenly solid
My moa kicked in gladness for
Pig is best Pig is delicious Pig is aristocracy
Pig Pig Pig! Pig never spits back
So hold still my lovely hold still
Shoulder high rock fences divided the pens
that held animals in swirling groups of ten
and as soon as we stood above them
they chorused to be fed and each of our Ten
assumed his assigned work:
Number One fetched water Number Two scraped
coconuts Number Three boiled bananas
Number Four swept the pens
Number Five cut swamp grass to mix with
the feed Number Six mended the fences
Number Seven tended to our wards’ ailments
Number Eight played them soothing tunes on
his nose flute made of pig bone Number Nine
counted to ensure ten animals to each pen
Only I was ignorant of my atua-meant purpose
Homesick for civilisation stranded on that rock-
fence recalling my boyhood pigherder’s loneliness
I wept as if Mulialofa had died again
and called What work does your atua
have for me? They focused again
And in their telling eyes I saw slaughterer
culler of the herds into tens: my club –
their primitive method of killing – was to
feed our village on pork and our crops
on pig’s blood heart offal
Ours was a pigherding crew out of nine others
that shared a communal fale feeding
only on vegetables and seafood: a tapu
that suited us because we spewed
every time cooked pork odour intruded
(4) Slaughterer
Tagata-Nei lived out a schedule woven into
their fibre (No other explanation for their
behaviour) Theirs was a history that unfolded
in their circle’s blood to ward off aging
the past and future 10 was eternity’s number
Each crew’s schedule was linked to others
in an ever-spiralling circle that meshed
earth sea sky and Vanimonimo
No choice for individuals to pursue separate
destinies to excel to innovate civilisation further
For the unchanging circle was perfection to be
as it was always admitting no deviance
or odd numbers But I’m getting ahead
of my tale into abstraction instead
of immediate detail and action –
the stuff of the gifted chronicler’s telling
(By the way Nei had no storytellers or historians
because of not needing to remember –
each moment was new yet expected
to be enjoyed here and now instantly)
But back to my tale of the moment: in the pigpens’
centre stood a breadfruit leafed
with clubs of all sizes and designs
From it I chose the heaviest to display
strength and unflinching killer swing
The club of ebony hardwood shone
like dark water in which my ferocity
was to be reflected in its beauty
In the shape of a double-headed erection
the front head for killing the other as balance
(Why is it our weapons are always imaged
on the penis which gives birth and the most
exquisite of pleasures and each new weapon
gets bigger and bigger? One day the biggest
in the ever-mushrooming power
of a cloud will choke us all with
its monstrous splendour)
Wungg-wung-wungg! I practised my swing
Numbers Eight and Nine beckoned
They’d trussed up a boar and held
it with forehead exposed to my killing
Lifted The club caught mercy’s zenith
and drove down into the giving bone and shriek-
ing animal Swung again and it kicked
once twice and knew stillness
My helpers swung the carcass on to the platform
Number Seven dragged it away while
I revelled in my new mana as Slaughterer
initiated Slaughterer growing
Slaughterer in the elite circle of Ten Slaughterers
They brought another pig then another and my
first afternoon passed with fifty carcasses
(no numbers over tens permitted) and my skin
tattooed with blood brain and bone splinters
my celebrating head aswirl with death’s richness
At the first evening shadows our crew stopped
working and I trailed their lean flanks
to the communal pools (It was hard
controlling my ‘intestine’ after that lusty killing!)
Silent women waited on the banks
Automatically I cupped my predicament but they
didn’t seem to see it as they washed us
with coconut husk dried us with siapo oiled
our bodies to a scented glistening without signs
of sexual arousal not even a lingering finger
In our fale we sat arms folded while the female crews
(one to each man) fed us a scrumptious mash of
clam coconut cream and taro (As pigherders
our hands weren’t permitted to pollute food)
Our feeders hummed but I couldn’t link to their talking
Washed the meal down with fresh coconut juice
and I copied my crew when they stretched back
on their mats and ali and dropped to sleep
which evaded me as I chased my fears about
what that savage country might promise
Later the quiet was like dying
No moon or stars but the world was aglow
with the luminous emanations from every thing
including the
sleepers in our fale – a honey light
that stretched to Vanimonimo’s belly
(Decided then that night explorations would best
uncover Nei’s secrets and rhythms)
Dawn was a quick kiss on my forehead
Woke to my crew disappearing and tasted
congealed pig’s blood in my nostrils
but when I pleaded to be relieved of the killing
they smiled and brought that day’s first animal
The slaughter would become during my
captivity a slow nightmare in which I’d watch
myself killing in tortured motion
condemned to that function forever as each
Tagata-Nei was to his predetermined role in
the circle from which he didn’t think of escaping
(It’s masalo that allows us to be dissatisfied
to question even that which is perfect)
Clubbing too is so primitive so I introduced
the civilised Samoan method of strangling e.g.
pig upsidedown hard yoke pressed down
across the windpipe silent and bloodless
My crew hummed their approval
At that night’s meal the other Slaughterers
hummed at me too but how had they acquired
my teaching? The insight flashed: you teach
one Tagata-Nei and if the group mind
approves the transfer to everyone is instant
(What a miraculous method of learning)
My strangling was now part of their culture
as if it had always been present and
I’d discovered how to civilise them swiftly
(that knowledge was a heady aphrodisiac)
(5) Birth and Death
Even on my secret night searches I observed
no aging death or procreation Little variation
