VAUGHAN RAPATAHANA

 

talking to my son in a funeral home

tiwhatiwha te pō, tiwhatiwha te ao
[gloom and sorrow prevail, day and night]

 

I spoke more authentically 
to you
during those thirty 
etiolated minutes  
than I ever did 
when you were alive.

the stark room,
shaped more like a coffin
than what you lay in
quite composed,
unmoved by
my ascesis of angst,
my agenda of guilt.

the wooden floor
an eavesdropper
bouncing back a farrago
of belated apologies,
an echolocation 
of mea culpa. 

those faded walls,
the fake flowers in a neutral vase
and the box of tissues
supplicating for the tears
I could no longer summon,
during that one-sided
confession to myself.

 

taku maunga

 

i ngā wā katoa ka ngau te āwangawanga 
me hoki ahau 
ki taku maunga

Taranaki
i ngā wāhi katoa

ka kurehu ki te hukarere
te kaitiaki mārohirohi 
mō katoa i tēnei wāhi; 
             me
aua hau hauāuru me hohoro 
e whiuwhiu atu ngā here
kotahi taima me mō te katoa

tēnei wāhi tapu o oranga ngākau
he rite tonu ki te whakakitenga
e te whakapaia i ahau,
ia wā 
ka kīia ahau ka hoki mai
ki te tāmata 
i ahau ano.

 

my mountain

Hokia ki tau maunga kia purea ai koe enga hau a Tawhirimatea
[Return to your mountain, so that you can be cleansed by the winds of Tawhirimatea]

 

whenever the angst bites
I must return
to my mountain.

Taranaki, 
omnipresent 
looms niveous,
the mighty guardian
of all nearby,
        &
those swift west winds
whisk away the claustral
once and for all.

this sanctuary of solace
is epiphanic,
it catharsises me,
each time 
I am called back
to reclaim  
myself. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand, when there is no Covid. He is widely published across several genres in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English, and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin and Romanian. New Zealand Book Council Writers’ File: https://www.read-nz.org/writer/rapatahana-vaughan/

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