Star Waka

Robert Sullivan

STAR WAKA

STAR WAKA

Robert Sullivan

Title Page

Note

He karakia timatanga

iii About some of the crew

iv 2140AD

v Honda Waka

vi Feelings

vii Reconnaissance

viii No

x Goldie (1)

xii Independence Day

xiii Rough Cuts

xiv Ka huri ahau ki te reo o te ao pouri

xv Sullivan Whanau

Waka 16 Kua wheturangitia koe

xvii Some definitions and a note on orthography

xviii Similitude

xix

xx a whakapapa construction

xxi Te ao marama I

xxii Te ao marama II

xxiii Formats (1)

xxiv Formats (2)

xxv power/powerlessness

xxvi

xxvii

xxviii Hooked

Waka 29 waka taua

xxx

xxxi

xxxii herenga waka

xxxiii

xxxiv Goldie (2)

xxxv

xxxvi

38 fleurs de lis

39 A wave

48 (Bright 1)

49 (environment 1)

54 waka rorohiko

55 Araiteuru

Waka 56 A Double-Hulled Waka

Waka 57 El Nino Waka

Waka 58 Waitangi Day

Waka 59 Elsdon Best

Waka 60 Dead Reckoning

Waka 61 Fragment

Waka 62 A narrator’s note

Waka 63 Venus

Waka 64

Waka 65

Waka 66 Hokule‘a

Waka 67 from We the Navigators

Waka 68

Waka 69 Kupe

Waka 70

Waka 71

Waka 72 Hawaikinui’s 1985 journey

Waka 73 Gone fishing

Waka 74 Sea anchor

Waka 75 A storm

Waka 76

Waka 77

Waka 78 An historical line

Waka 79

Waka 80

Waka 81 A cup of tea

Waka 82 Te ao marama III

Waka 83

Waka 84

Waka 85

Waka 86

Waka 87

Waka 88

Waka 89

Waka 90 Te ao marama IV

Waka 91 A Feast

Waka 92

Waka 93

Waka 94

Waka 95

Waka 96

Waka 97

Waka 98

Waka 99

Waka 100

Also by Robert Sullivan

Note

I wrote Star Waka with some threads to it: that each poem must have a star, a waka or the ocean. This sequence is like a waka, members of the crew change, the rhythm and the view changes – it is subject to the laws of nature.

There are three sections, indicated by the change in title numbering from Roman to Arabic to ‘waka’ numbering. Occasionally a poem’s numbering breaks into another part of the sequence.

There is a core of one hundred poems, and 2001 lines.

For references to Maori mythology see Margaret Orbell’s Encyclopedia of Maori Mythology. Other references are built into the text.

He karakia timatanga

A prayer to guide waka out the throat,

between Hawaiiki’s teeth, the last green speckled

glove of coast, past upthrust knee and rock toe

in the distance to paddle and sail toward sunset –

when each crack in the house of the sun

is submerged – doors and windows cloaked by night,

charred sky where stars become arrows,

lit signs travelling across a black zone.

A prayer to hold lashings and fittings close

amid the swelled guts of Tangaroa.

A prayer to scoop out sustenance –

sweet fish caught by divers in bright saltwater

marinaded in coconut and hunger. A prayer

to keep food for the two week trip to Aotearoa,

gourds intact, yam and taro and kumara gods alert

to the slap and grab of a restless swell –

whether in the breast or seabed. A prayer, a declaration,

for quick land, straight seas, and health

of all parts celestial, temporal and divine:

food music and drink of this star waka –

the chanted rhythms

hoea hoea ra

storms

hoea hoea ra

a thousand years

hoea hoea ra

fleet mothers of tales

hoea hoea ra

I greet you in prayer oh star oh waka …

and pray for your combination here.

He karakia mo korua, e te waka, e te whetu o te ao nei.

Star and waka, a prayer for you both.

i

Men rest their oars at night –

sailing into paua, plump fowl, sweet

water, miracles of earth, land rolling

from hills into skies, land large enough

for lakes, enough to gather people in,

a feast for a forest of gods hitting sky.

Star waka is a knife through time. Crews

change, language of each crew changes,

as fast as sun burns ground, and tongues curse him.

Crews take longer, yet learn less about makers

of waka, meanings of star. Inheritors

of body, watched by spirits watching star.

Star hangs on ears of night, defining light.

Hear sounds of waka knifing time – aue, again,

what belongs to water belongs to blood. Crews leap aboard

leap out, with songs of relations and care

to send them. Whole families have journeyed here,

they continue the line. The bottom line

is to know where to go – star points.

Kaituki counts stroke. Tohunga,

who dwells beyond law, finds star.

System is always there for waka.

Star rises and falls with night.

So guidance system attached.

Belief system of heart. And tide.

In ancient days navigators sent waka between.

Now, our speakers send us on waka. Their memories,

memory of people in us, invite, spirit,

compel us aboard, to home government, to centre:

Savai‘i, Avaiki, Havaiki, Hawaiiki, from where we peopled

Kiwa’s Great Sea. We left home by a thousand

different stars, but just one waka takes us back.

Let us regroup. We have never travelled further –

just one star stays familiar in the heavens now.

Tamanui sun dribbles from sky. How will we ever settle

this cold place? Makariri. Will our high magic work here?

ii

And when waka reaches Aotearoa again,

empty, we know it has come for more –

and when waka reaches Europe

we know it has lost some more –

and when craft work on waka

descends into varnish and paint it has lost some more –

more times the waka leaves full

we lose more –

and more

iii About some of the crew

He takes notes about his history and culture, even his own family

he takes notes about. He tries to hit the right ones

every time he speaks about them – he does his best

to compliment and complement their abilities,

the way they looked and what they looked at.

Sometimes a few cracks appear in the waka:

someone was a murderer, or someone was not all

that they seemed. To the interested, cracks appear on

the same scale, are worthy of same judgement.

To hide these judgements in little letters is their fate.

iv 2140AD

Waka reaches for stars – mission control clears us for launch

and we are off to check the guidance system

personally. Some gods are Greek to us Polynesians,

who have lost touch with the Aryan mythology,

but we recognise ours and others – Ranginui and his cloak,

and those of us who have seen Fantasia know Diana

and the host of beautiful satyrs and fauns.

We are off to consult with the top boss,

to ask for sovereignty and how to get this

from policy into action back home.

Just then the rocket runs out of fuel –

we didn’t have enough cash for a full tank –

so we drift into an orbit we cannot escape from

until a police escort vessel tows us back

and fines us the equivalent of the fiscal envelope

signed a hundred and fifty years ago.

They confiscate the rocket ship, the only thing

all the iwi agreed to purchase with the last down payment.

v Honda Waka

Today I surrendered the life

of my Honda City

to a wrecker in Penrose for $30.

I bought it seven years ago for $6000.

It has rust in the lower sills,

rust around the side windows –

on the WOF inspection sheet it says:

‘this car has bad and a lot of rust …’

That car took me to Uncle Pat’s tangi in Bluff.

We stopped and gazed at Moeraki,

the dream sky, on the way.

A friend followed us in it on the way

to National Women’s for Temuera’s birth

(we were in her huge Citroen).

We went to Otaki, and Wellington,

in the Honda to visit family.

The Honda took me to Library School

perched next to Victoria Uni.

I drove Grandad across the creek in the Honda

at night after the family reunion bash.

Temuera’s first car seat was in the Honda.

That Honda has seen a high percentage

of my poetry.

Now I have left it behind.

vi Feelings

Shooting pains, or are they growing,

how does one enumerate and describe

a feeling? – should one resort to the military

analogy as outlined in Colonel Bridge’s

journal (there he goes again, referring

to the massacre as if he doesn’t talk about it

enough – let the event lie boy, don’t bore

the reader with the petty tale – it’s all

in the Turnbull Library anyway, I’m sure

they’d want to read it when they’re in

the mood) OR SHOULD ONE TELL

THE TRUTH IN CAPITAL LETTERS

(cut it sic) or should one concentrate

on the beauty of the waka slicing

through concentration, through the vision

of the mind, lighting the architecture

of every dwelling, beauty of physical story,

water worn lines of brown bodies

sliding close to one another,

dipping and rising toward shore?

vii Reconnaissance

Highlights of the forest of the Lord Tane

were logged for the fleet. Fleet transport

and weaponry, food baskets and ancestors,

technology and carving: a greatness of hulls

and sails – ships for the mission – settlers going

to ground thousands of miles south-west, taking

their divinities, agriculture, animals, to inhabit

the strangeness of climate and soil reported

by the first expedition. The waka represent ancestors

in name and form. Their names are invoked today

and bind Maori people. Waka fight for yesterday

like it is tomorrow; war cries of orators line marae

with subjective recollections. Speakers

point out borders of land, which waka went

where, who guard harbours – voices modelling

land into history and lineage, driving up

highways of legend – much art is visual:

displays of beauty accessible to all

but the symbolism remains Maori

and will always be for Maori.

viii No

I cannot make this like maker of waka –

reach into my heart

heal wood of its rough cuts

take what isn’t mine to take

whittling and whittling

lines decked with paua

wooden crowns turned to warriors’ bowels

dreaming of the beauty of the vessel

fleets filling lakes and harbours

riding rivers in judgement

waka everywhere –

taking their contents to the settlements

what did they carry?

how can I tell you in confidence?

why is it that each time I stand

I sway? and the crew sways too?

star waka is in every waka –

land fell a thousand years ago

yet waka still searches for star

among all people

who have become stars

made stars in patterns on wood

and the justice of heaven

(which is black

remember

ix

and he tries to remember

but remembering is for things

of experience

these things he hasn’t experienced:

the timing of a hundred

following birds across an Ocean

diving into the Ocean

and coming back up

how huge an Ocean is

composing chants

to move people

across the Ocean

to set out from Hawaiiki

knowing the return is death

x Goldie (1)

he pads around downtown

spots the Toi Tamaki

Heritage Gallery’s picture

of the starving lost waka crew –

so realistic, ‘on the spot’ –

proof of early

anthropological puddings

just look at it,

where are the women,

the crops, tools, material

for settlement?

hey they were paddling

round the ocean

when they bumped

into Aotearoa

and were canvassed –

must be their account

xi

he and I suggest ways of narrating a story of waves

a billion billion of them to borrow a phrase

borrowed from the infinite numbers available

in telling an infinite story lapping the shapes

formed round land – a set of keys on a lap

landing there by mistake – a slip

and it all piles into the ocean mistook

for a reclamation declaimed by the tumbling

mumbling tongues of salinity

at a beach which heads for a context

a breach into the canon of beaches

writing in sand obscured by puffs

and gulls and tide’s own cursive

curling lickity ups and lollipop downs

through the otherwise metronomic

glassiness then swelling then rough

to high waves and back down

to the ground or to the rocks again

and again the saline solution

xii Independence Day

We hear a lot in Auckland these days

about the cost of the viaduct basin

the benefits accrued from the Cup challenge

various economic analyses: tourists

property exposure capital: the Americans

are really doing their homework

before they decide to colonise us

(but this time I really mean most kiwis

i.e. 85.1% of the population according

to the 1996 census) it doesn’t mean

much to the rest it’s still going to be

a colony

xiii Rough Cuts

the strokes slow, start cutting the drink

becalmed by tired arms

billowing at a tangent

we need a flying fox to new land

hook our mast and glide

like our descendants in skies

who have histories

backwards and forwards

our descendants who will secure

discoveries and communicate

to their descendants the value

of wonders they will find

allowing us – the ancestors –

to navigate our history

down lines

xiv Ka huri ahau ki te reo o te ao pouri

And morning yields to the purpose of the day.

Bright blood, the sun a clot tying darkness.

Waka of death duels death’s waka.

The event chokes blood lines –

to civilized time and lex romanum.

The threats, curses, fingers pointing

at me, descendant of the crew

of one death waka,

pinch every nerve,

make me sad and proud

that I am an ambassador,

representative of all they surveyed.

And confused, very confused.

Why did these things happen?

Why are these things put

on me?

Where does it end?

At least

I am learning my history,

the people

who lie within me.

Let anyone challenge

our place again.

xv Sullivan Whanau

The grass at Te Kaaretu was renowned

for its softness – our ancestors would line

their whare with it for bedding. Today we are

gathered up like clumps of Kaaretu grass,

made soft by the gathering, and we line

the whare nui at Pihareinga, Te Kaaretu,

with our bedding once again.

I learn Arapeta’s song, e tuwhera atu nei,

te awa o Taumarere … our ancestral river

of Taumarere opens here, although of course

we had settlements at Matauwhi and Kororareka –

the first New Zealand capital – we were

one of the first tribes to be affected

by westernisation. Today we are following

the river, tracing the paths of our people,

the great names and the previously unknown,

trying to find the first Sullivan who gave us

his name early last century. What was his

first name? who did he marry? why did he stay here?

was he marooned? was it a woman?

what was his waka? These questions remain to date.

Star Waka

STAR WAKA

STAR WAKA

CONTENTS

Note

He karakia timatanga

i

ii

iii About some of the crew

iv 2140AD

v Honda Waka

vi Feelings

vii Reconnaissance

viii No

ix

x Goldie (1)

xi

xii Independence Day

xiii Rough Cuts

xiv Ka huri ahau ki te reo o te ao pouri

xv Sullivan Whanau

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