THE BARRIER

Broken islands
where there's never a clean horizon
to glare at you.

What remains of the industrious
here for a thousand years?

A silvermine and stamping battery
an old whaling station
and graves on scenic heads.


There are still wrecks
skewn on the needles at North Head,
prodigiously rusting.

Though a glaze on the water and ultramarines
suggest peace

high up on Hirakimata
imagine history makes landings

a million feet of timber
sawn, transported
the try pots practising their butchery.

Then it goes gigantically silent,
excepting the vicious gales.

VERTIGO

You can see two oceans up here

till rain on the harbour
obliterates an entire gulf

though the south stays gigantic
as when it erupted out the sea.

After the rain there's a scribble of islands
rushed off by some god

containers plait wakes by Takaranga

and traffic, corpuscles along Quay Street
feed the city.

A man lovesick for history
can stare out and imagine these things

follow with his finger causeways
that smudge the land's edge

then squint one eye
and with the power of time
demolish a city under his thumb.

MIHIWAKA

Memory goes south
stands high over Signal Hill

showing a liberal curve of ocean
a rosary of islands.

Inland the country
makes allusions in
stone cruciforms, lumpy backbones of


hills.

Earth rummages for symbols
and may mean more than any
affirmation I behest,
or nothing:

the finger of Aramoana points out
to connect with horizon

coast is washed with
translucent sea and sky

and long bays
stride bluffs, plough north
into mist

where distances gather sombrely.

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