One too many mornings
Up that precipitous hill
One too many beats of that sterling heart
One too many longings
For truth
And
Christ
Suddenly
You were gone
You were gone
In a manner ostentatiously matter of fact
Your traveler’s litany begun …
Arch and Milly would have grieved
For their son
(named for an illustrious man)
Who became
The illumination
Of
Letters
In
Aotearoa
And
Would
Today
Have voted green
No doubt
But let’s forget all that
Forget all the trappings of luminaries
The awards
The prizes
Forget the dusty moderns you once emulated
Auden
Spender
MacNeice
Day-Lewis
Thomas
(whose pisshead ways you were to carbon copy)
You were all that
James
Keir
Baxter
But
You
Were
Also
Hemi
Hemi of Jerusalem
And Hemi of Jerusalem overturned the tables
(Templar Jim)
Cocked a snook
Turned the tables
Even
On
His
Own
Old
Self
That old self
Raised on Greek myth
(with symbols)
This young Jungian
With a lifelong commitment to religion
(was once baptised an Anglican)
Born to the sanctified life
Cloistered even
Yet you preferred the factories
Farms
And
Editing
Your life as a sanatorium porter
To
Safety
And a world of gothic bricks and dust
But
(your time is filled with buts)
You loved so wisely and so well
That
Husband
Father
Seeker after truth
And
God
Became a habit
A
Habit
Of
Denial
But let’s forget all that
(stone, in that grass your demise recording, lying)
Let’s
Forget all life’s invasions and illusions
Delusions
(seclusions )
Was that a part of this?
Those grandiose pleasures of the fresh
(yes, that is what I mean)
But
Let’s get back
Let’s get back
Let’s get back
To
That
Sombre
Walking spectre
Of a man
Of
Everyman
One deep night
(kingitanga black)
11pm
You walked
Barefoot
Across
The road
In front of Ngapuwaiwaha Marae
Just
Outside
Of
Taumarunui
I
On the other hand
Was
Shod
Driving
A souped up Cortina
Straight from the cozzie club
(you would know what that means)
Had been practicing
The oval ball diversion
(That fevered national pastime)
With
Mates
You were picked up in headlights
(thanks, Henry, Ford I mean)
Eyes locked
Wheel spun
Deviated
Slightly
From the straight and narrow
(I aspired then to run as the crow flies – hear me Ted Hughes, hear me)
Off into my dark and abstemious night
You
Off into yours
Sober
(I somehow doubt)
On both counts
Somber
Each in our own
Way
It is years gone by, Hemi
I remember this
You
Will
Not
You
In your daisy-pushing world of flawed mortality
God’s wormwood long gone from your seams
That certain convocation of politic worms
Has loved you
Long time
Are
You
Now
Quite
Chap-fallen?
You
For whom
Everything
Was either meaningless
Or else
Mythology
You
With your mythic consciousness
Your
Nun-like
Christian
Love?
Where are you now?
Can we know that now?
Where are you now?
What’s your wairua now?
But let’s forget all that
Let’s end where we began
On that hill
Leading to the house at Jerusalem
Where our paths crossed again
(my God, twice in one year, Jim, that’s mortality for you
when it calls you follow)
That driven Cortina
Could have put an end to your barefoot life
That river
Potent
Whanganui
Casting me adrift
That
Home-made canoe
In flood at Pipiriki
Clouded sea beckoning
Choppers overhead
Could have put an end to mine
Thoughts of you
Invading
Not for the first time
That house
That hill
The line of men
(mostly men)
The suits outside the gate
Waiting
Lost
Out of time and harsh
Out of place
You in a box hauled up to your rest
Making us work to the very end
Getting
That last laugh
As we hid
That
Other
Quake of fear
That it all might be an end indeed
Just a black hole
And
Those
Politic
Worms
Compost, Jim, just fucking compost after all
Like
Mishima
You were destitute and honest
Rich in mana
Your life’s trappings worn like a filthy coat
Hungry to the end to better stay awake
Love
(not just that sheila you wanted all your life)
But
God’s love
That sliced you open like a fish
Hung you up by your heels
Let the sun shine into your bag of dreams
And
Your
Idiot ambitions
Dying to wake up the world
To wake up in the world
On that grassed hillside
At
Jerusalem
Not the High Country, Hemi
But
Jerusalem
Hiruharama
Jerusalem
This is your home in the rock, Jim
Your wailing wall
Your Machaneh Yehuda, Hemi
Your Mount of Olives
Your
Gethsemane
Oh, Jesus, Hemi, your Golgotha
Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus …
But
Harry
Sang
(sang softly, Denis’s storms still now)
Magpies
Quardled
Ardled
Doodled
You
No
Ordinary
Son
Not something nothing
But
A
Man
For All
Weathers
No mortgage corporation took you away
The last words are yours, Hemi
Your mihi
First and last:
‘Alone we are born
and die alone
Yet see the red-gold cirrus
over snow-mountain shine
upon the upland road
ride easy stranger
Surrender to the sky
your heart of anger’
Ride easy
Hemi
dykiegirl 