POI DANCERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 717, 10 April 1953, Page 9

POI DANCERS

SPENDER, grass-skirted, like ibis or flamingo, ~ On the concert chamber boards in daggered light Come the poi dancers, swaying, each by her dazzling circle Of swung cord haloed, chanting from their gyre Of time removed to the cramped rows overcoated Who munch their chocolate, shuffle, murmur and sigh. Among these sallow leaves anachronistic Their song-accustomed rather this tired hall To the flower-clock of Mozart, Valhalla of Sibelius. Yet the blood’s crystal trembles to another dawn Alien, renewed; and the arrow of their chanting Pierces the eyeball of an age deformed. Rather should they dance where palisades smoke-blackened Bar out the seawind, while the surf beneath Worn granite hammers; or where those carved ancestral Idols look on the marae, by a log fire’s heat, While tiered stars from night wave-tongued, atua-haunted, Praise earth’s necessity and hand-wrought peace, The dancers go-tomorrow will labour in office, Restaurant, factory, meshed in another net Than the blood weaves. The stage is darkened; the wilted Foliage goes in a dustcan. Where now the breath Imagined, of time’s renewal? Outside, in catacombs ° Of neon death, easily one smiles and forgets. Yet I have seen, breaking the stony midnight By gates of horn, in dreams, my love danceEyes burning, body electric, clothed in the earth-black, Bloodstone-red, white of the toothed shark, Her fathers gathered-in her limbs night’s violence,

In her swung pois the circle of day’s calm.

James K.

Baxter