THE DEATH OF AN OLD MAN ON AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON

Te Ao Hou, March 1967, Page 11

THE DEATH OF AN OLD MAN ON AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON The sun burns on with its single eye but he lies in that waxen half-sleep which is peculiar to approaching death Disturbances of past speech struggle at the lips and vestiges of old actions writhe the limbs with a token violence Then the voice freed from the captivity of the frail organs regains its old power and strides the misted maraes of the mind Now the years collapse and time reasserts its natural infinity Beside the bed the women of the moving beads pray through murmuring mouths ritual words The image on the mantelshelf gives no sign but pursues some secret inward life of its own beneath the painted plaster folds of its mantle The wind rises and an ancient keening cries unasked and unanswered through the forest trees In the room all movement has ended but the candle bursts and the petulant shadows crying on the whitewashed walls Outside in the yard brown leaves caught in a vortex dance the year's end in a circle of biting wind and intone scratchy incantations of decay to the cynical roots in the darkness beneath The shudder of the final impact breaks the knotted cords of memory and life bursts free De profundis clamavi ad te Domine Domine exaudi vocem meam … But the great trees begin the litany of a rising gale and the whole world resounds to the fury of their supplication. —Frederick C. Parmée