In his first book of poems Fervor de Buenos Aires (published in 1923) the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges writes thatThe streets of Buenos Aires
are the core of my being.
Not the energetic streets
choked with crowds and hustle
but the lethargic streets of the suburb,
almost invisible by force of habit
made eternal in the semidarkness and twilight
and those further out
beyond the gentle trees
where austere little houses scarcely venture,
overwhelmed by deathless distances,
losing themselves in the deep vision
of the sky and the plains...
Contrasting with the knife-fights and lurid night life of the suburbs of Buenos Aires, the suburbs of Hamilton struggle to inspire any poetic impulse.
- the quiet desperation of families eating in the buffet restaurant - the café-less waste of mile upon mile of new housing estates - the occasional vast hypermarché of big box retail outlets with the obligatory food court tacked on -
These elements can be found in all New Zealand cities, but arguably none embodies them so magnificently as Hamilton.
In the latest issue of the community newspaper a former ACT party president and local gym owner publishes a paid advertorial lambasting the opponents of "One New Zealand".
His secretary has received only a handful of negative phone calls since last week's "column", he boasts.
One hour's drive east from Hamilton in the town of Putaruru I spent an afternoon behind the counter of a Cambodian bakery, and in amongst the alien chatter my sense of geographic and temporal dislocation converged with that expressed by the poet Mason (who grew up in the tiny settlement of Lichfield some four miles down the road) in a poem from his 1924 collection, The Beggar:
That I go out alone to them it seems
because they see none with me
in the way ignorant that the fabrics of my dreams
are less intangible to me than they
Ignorant that I have heard and seen
Christ break the bondage of his tongue-tied sightlessness
have walked with firm-faithed Mary to the stake
and kissed the hem of martyred Flora's dress
And I in Lichfield have been
Chatterton's accessory in suicide
have Gaius Marius in Minturnae seen
for many hours by Waitemata's tide
Burnt Dian's temple down in Otahuhu
and slain Herostratus at Papatoe
and here in Penrose brought Aeneas
through to calm Ausonian lands from bloody Troy...
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The Mason poem speaks to all educated New Zealanders struggling to communicate the enormity of their transplanted culture to the indifferent and uninvolved landscapes of their colonial home.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right Chris that the Mason poem works because it speaks to the reality of the emotional/intellectual disjunction felt by European New Zealanders as quasi-exiles in their own country.
ReplyDeleteHowever I am undecided as to whether the best adjective description for this predicament in which we find outselves is tragedy or bathos - such is the cringe-inducing nature of "Kiwi Kulcha"!