Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Experiment 7

Maui

page 29

Maui

He drifts gently in the rough canoe
Waving through the brittle sea,
Watching over the side shapes, fingers,
Form and change in languid water.
Somewhere, somehow, those shades have meaning:
I watch, to discover myself, to fashion
The image of a high grassy hill
Over a turbulent sea; above me here,
The grass shadows ripple as I tread their surface,
I am wind wide sweeping my creation.
This is my place, my farthest home:
I shall receive it seven times more.

Maui, come Maui, here, here it is
Your pattern, your life, the winds ripple
Like weeds in a stream, and your eyes
Find yourself there. This is your thought,
Your strength; this is your land.
- Brothers, no, brothers. - It is, yes it is, because

O player Maui

Your hooded hands
Remote, can move
The rain to call
In patterned voice
That darkness wove;
Like eyes, they stray
Beyond their bounds
And capture notes
Of ravelled thoughts
In constant sounds;
Their power lies
In their unknowing
Net of each
Vague ocean eye
Where sense is flowing -
- Enough, brother, enough! I have made this land
From my image, what I have seen exists.
Here is the place for me. But see
How it moves! listen to the echo
Oh, hear it, brothers: it is frivolous,
It does not care; here there is the voice of distant people,
Who will destroy my destiny:
page 30 They are my worlds sung awry by others...
'By the light of the green
Sugar of Babylon, every thick dream
Resounds in the fall
Of marmorial hall:
Then quick let us fly
From the butterfly's eye
Away from the glare
Of fritillary stare
And back to the night
With the wan grassy light.
- I see monkeys playing in the wind,
I see stone horses sitting on the window sill
And it is myself, still.
The soot is flying in the wind
And dragons' teeth with stones are filled.
Low I lie, a worm turned to the rain and hail
In a blown grassland -
-Yet
Bells hang on the sky.
This peaceful pride forever ringing
Returns, in the cry of a breaking star,
To the smoke of these mountains.
- You are wrong, brother, this is not my image.
- It is late, let it be. Come home.