But there are tears at this reunion.

The speeches are from everyone here,

we introduce ourselves as the special branches

of the whanau. We move around

like the four winds, but when we gather

at Te Kaaretu, we are anchored

and hold fast to one another.

Waka 16 Kua wheturangitia koe

Beloved

sent to Hawaiiki

to become a star

who guides

dreamers to reality

to become a star

portrait on the cloak

of a night on whose

shoulders rest

dreams

of a restless people

who dream white

waves of currency

waka rides

and falls

black and blue

with only stars

to point away since

sun and moon

are tagged for domination

yet stars are

ancestors

they are stars

our ancestors

and we will be stars

like kauri

totara

kahikatea

rimu

awa

tapped for fire

sapped for gum

used for battle

construction materials

veins into dams

where the power

of the land powers

a mechanical culture

strange ships in the sky

air filled with radiation

we are vacuumed into this

culture of menace to the land

we are told we would do this too if

we had the technology

and our people do it

to the land for people

by people and this land

joins the congress of scars

on the planet a culture

of urban decay and renewal

a culture of dead capitals

sucking the life out of new

cities a culture that knows

no boundaries has only

prophecies called strategies

and stars look down on this and eyes

of divinities

look down on stars

and eyes

of the powerless look up

but only at night

when machines

lighten blackness

when many stars

are lost in the lightning

except in the papakainga

from tops of pa

from middle of ocean

from these places stars

meant to be seen can be

xvii Some definitions and a note on orthography

in English the waka

is a canoe

but the ancestral waka

were as large

as the European barks

of the eighteenth century explorers

size isn’t the key factor here

it is the quality of the crews

their similar systems of navigation

the common purpose of settlement

and the labelling which is in English

which I do not need to spell out

except to say that it is still very

difficult to procure word processors

that have a set of macronised vowels

and subeditors who do not pluralise

Maori loan words although most have

ceased italicising them

to give a sense of inclusion

in one context

in the other context

it is for purposes

of pacification

xviii Similitude

sticking a pipe

through Stonehenge –

that’s what it is

to direct that Mangere’s

ancient stone fields

have a sewerage pipe

cut through them

it is a violation of the lifeblood

of its guardians

to pour excrement

through one of the few

sacred areas left

in the region must be wrong

it is wrong isn’t it?

don’t you think it is wrong?

who thinks it is right?

is this extraordinary?

we are told ordinariness

is the standard in justice –