Haere Ra

HAERE RA

Farewell to Huhuharama –
The green hills and the river fog,
Cradling the convent and the Maori houses –

The peach tree at my door is broken, sister,
It carried too much fruit,
It hangs now by a bent strip of bark –

But better that way than the grey moss
Cloaking the branch like an old man’s beard;
We are broken by the Love of the Many

And then we are at peace
Like the fog, like the river, like a roofless house
That lets the sun stream in because it cannot help it.

James K Baxter

Baxter bestrides my poetry-life like a colossus. To this young man rather bewildered with life at the time his phrases such as “love is not valued much in Pig Island” carried certitude. I saw poetry then as a fountain of insightful ideas. Critics complain about Baxter’s self-mythologising. Even though I was aware of that aspect, his poems were powerful stuff - the poet as rebel, holy man, honest himself in a dishonest world, idealistic despite the disappointments of life.

In 1965 Baxter penned a succinct three-phrase biographical summary, ‘the beaches of the place I grew up in: then the pub; and latterly perhaps the hour of death which one looks forward to.’ Towards the end of his life his struggles over his Catholic faith moved towards a more mystical view of death as a normal and accepted part of existence as evidenced by a broken peach tree, fog, river and the roofless house which let in the sun [Son].