Apirana Taylor: EYES OF THE RURU

Kaea, Issue 2, 1 March 1980, Page 20

Apirana Taylor: EYES OF THE RURU

Several books of Maori interest have been published recently. Some of them are reviewed elsewhere in this issue of Te Kaea. Here’s one that stands out from the others. For one thing, it’s by a Maori; for another, it’s not a history book on the contrary, it is bluntly, painfully contemporary.

Eyes of the Ruru is the first book of poetry by Apirana Taylor, of Ngati Porou, though individual poems have appeared in various publications. In his introduction to the book, Bruce Stewart describes Api as “a warrior a young new kind of warrior ... he shrugs off the establishment and ‘plastic Maoridom’.” Young, honest and forceful, Api is the articulate tip of an iceberg few of us have been able to understand our own alienated youth. He can write with love of the land and the past, but he also writes with anger of the confusion and frustration besetting so many people who hover between two cultures yet are at home in neither.

EYES OF THE RURU Apirana Taylor Voice Press: $4.50

SAD JOKE ON A MARAE

Tihei Mauriora I cried Kupe Paikea Te Kooti Rewi and Te Rauparaha I saw them

grim death and wooden ghosts

carved on the meeting house wall.

In the only Maori I knew I called Tihei Mauriora. Above me the tekoteko raged. He ripped his tongue from his mouth and threw it at my feet.

Then I spoke. My name is Tu the freezing worker. Ngati D.B. is my tribe. The pub is my Marae. My fist is my taiaha. Jail is my home.

Tihei Mauriora I cried. They understood the tekoteko and the ghosts though I said nothing but Tihei Mauriora For that’s all I knew.

EVIL WINDS

Rangi has been separated from Papa. Yet even in winter, the coldest season of his love. His rays embrace earth. Why are we not the same. Alone in bed You are not by my side.

Ripped apart from drunken winds of rage We have been hurled further than the Gods. If only I had the suns arms I would reach out and hold you again.

THOUGHTS ON THE ROAD

See how the twin peaks rise under the hands of the sun’s warm rays. And the arms of the rainbow that embrace the earth in moist lovemaking.

Lost in creation they are undisturbed by my presence for I am from them.

Skyfather Earthmother the old people were right. For I see the union of sun and earth and hear their songs of fertility pregnant with life.