let my words speak for me even as they betray me

Is it sad to see the people live in rubbish in Surat Thani?
   not as sad as to see the rubbish of ideas people live in in NZ

Is it sad to see the oppression people live in in Al Riyadh?
   not as sad as to see the people choose the oppression that they live in in NZ

  Is it bad to see in the rubbish splendour?
    in the oppression freedom?

I must find a lovesong for the country my parents brought me into
   and where I have found love

   whither I find myself returning after the splendour and freedom of air travel,
which really must be counted as miraculous
—— perhaps the only miracle of the modern world is this architecture drawn in jetstreams (clouds we come to later)

returning to New Zealand I find myself turning to politics and poetry for a cure

neither here nor there can I find one,
   there a voice
   here a position

but I cannot find one I can trust
and I cannot find one in all good conscience
   that I can endorse,

the slightest analysis will tell you
as much as a glance:

that it floats greenly in a turquoise sea
   or blue on an emerald

if critical thought were food
you would die starving,
   instead of turning to vegetarianism
as you have

and green on blue or blue on green
there is more sadness than can be moralised
or even thought
away: the tears of Rangi

tie the heart in knots
tying the heart in knots, from an early age
and placing it out of reach of the young minds
of its critics

Did I say? I have had a birthday
and this line    from a dream

the children of many lands clap their hands.
What does it mean?

the skies are as fascinating as etchings
—— the etchings of Doré show
   how we ascend
   from the inferno
to paradise.

have I said for how many years I have consulted clouds?
even yesterday I saw in the forest a small white face

No, it's not that they're the wrong ideas
but like an ill-considered tattoo
of belonging

  of longing  

It is so beautifully quiet that I need a drink.
It is so beautifully noisy I need music
   to organise it all
   to—as John Ash says, in tmesis—sum it up

or is that wall it in?
is that why it disturbs me?
is that why it confronts me?

like a suicide, even a mimed one, is confronting?
(in truth, every one is mimed, because every one is mute)

some evenings there are no other songs that so offer the possibility of walling the whole thing in
Ash does not write
and Cavafy does not
perhaps the distance will not prove another tyranny,
who knows what our closeness would disclose,
if we were even close.

(3 June 2026, Waiheke)

This piece will be added to the series called Political Works