Murray Edmond

Everyday Life on Mount Forehead (excerpt)

17/1

Yuri signed her name with her stamp
the two characters – KINU (silk) and GAWA (river) –
in red inside a circle of red ink

SILK-RIVER

what an exotic beautiful name I wanted to exclaim
until I stopped to listen to my own language
and heard such names as SILKSTONE or BRIDGEWATER
for what they are which is to say what they might be


ostranenie of course Shklovsky called it


to hear then stop and listen and to hear again

on the TV news at 6pm last

night ‘breaking news’ of Hone Tuwhare’s death


TU to stand to stop to remain
WHARE house

hear the name again

and what stands inside the name

in ’77 in Sid (Hirirni) Melbourne’s reo class we
were set the composition
‘Taku whare tu mokemoke’
poem/prose/song/essay/whatever-you-liked
to speak with the voice of the carved house in the
National Museum

the house is not a house without the people

it does not stand

in 1966 (or was it five

Scott and I went to hear him read almost all of
No Ordinary Sun cigarette after cigarette poem after
poem in the new Teachers College/University lecture theatre
in Hillcrest (the college just moved from Melville

(the university just a little more than an idea

before each poem he apologised for the poem we were
about to hear

funny funny funny old man funny

only one friend

went to Waikato
(the rest of us thought we wanted to drop

dead rather than stay in Hamilton

not from choice but
with mother dying and father in prison it was
all she could afford

good to hear now she teaches at

The New School in New York

Best not to leave a mark

behind for good or ill

in her big old Holden she drove me
round the lake under the stars under that tree:

the girl in the park

did not reach up to touch

the cold steel buttons

hear again
here again

biking across Hamilton for poetry’s sake

23/1

KOTAHITANGA 1889

NZ flag at half mast as Pat Hohepa finishes his
speech, a young man scurries into the house
to announce: ‘They read a Tuwhare poem at Sir Ed’s funeral –
I heard it on the radio’

but most locals here haven’t read any

Tuwhare poem

careful he might write another one with that blue ballpoint
in his left hand

the Wharepaepae urupa is hidden from view

across a paddock where the cars are parked, down a track
then up to the top of a small steep hill

from there you can

look out north south east west / as far as the eye
a fine place to rest

there’s/work yet, for the living

stopped by the cops for goin’ too slow
whoa
just want to get there as late as I can
whoa whoa whoa

red light in my head

blue light in my eyes

long green stick insect waves in the air sitting on
the rimu like a Bill Hammond bird

huhu bug

blunders in to join the drinkers

a fool moon

and a mist at dawn

the land breathes out long and slow