MERCEDES WEBB-PULLMAN
In the beginning
It echoes like fruit from a vine twined
through trelliswork in a ghostly garden
summerhouse that had once been white.
Sad, glimpsed perfection and loss,
its instant disappearance. A million
crescent moons, stars in Matariki,
the sky all eyes and smiles, a year of
meteors, comets transient and strange.
Hōne Heke’s revenant body appears
by a Grey Lynn boarding house califont,
sharing a bath with Tame Iti and Pat
Downs. Body scans, taps and screening
assure security allegiance, perfunctory
as karakia at lunch, a pledge of lessons.
Twelve hours ago I started with Saint
Sophia’s constant refrain It’s time to
turn west. It’s time to. A blank here,
where a paedophile was redacted, and
the student, his victim, another blank.
Lately I’m convinced of a parallel universe
like a negative where we’re the blanks
in some other reality, maybe a strike
organiser dancing gravitas with strangers;
Mr Whippy, Ronald Mac, and the first Māori
politician, conversing with neighbours
while wiping the slate clean, until I’m not
sure if I can ever trust anything written.
The taste of milk left sitting in the sun.
Thick wire mesh cages with surface rust.
Masculine and feminine forces coming
together, the purity of that first chime.
First, hear it. Next, listen to it. Only then,
silently, meticulously, it forms: logos.