Jerusalem Sonnets (11)

One writes telling me I am her guiding light And my poems her bible — on this cold morning After moss I smoke one cigarette And hear a magpie chatter in the paddock, The image of Hatana — he bashes at the windows In idiot spite, shouting — ‘Pakeha! You can be ‘The country’s leading poet’ — at the church I murmured, ‘Tena koe,' To the oldest woman and she replied, ‘Tena koe’— Yet the red book is shut from which I should learn Maori And these daft English words meander on, How dark a light! Hatana, you have gripped me Again by the balls; you sift and riddle my mind On the rack of the middle world, and from my grave at length A muddy spring of poems will gush out.