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This poem is a souvenir from my days in New Zealand's peacetime military. We went to Tonga to do medical work, including a health survey on, if memory serves, the incidence of typhoid. This was one of three overseas trips I had with the army, the other two being a jungle training exercise in Fiji and a medial mission to the Solomon Islands.
The spelling here follows New Zealand English for the words "faeces" and "coloured." Selenite is a substance in which, in the laboratory, fecal samples are bathed. Note: a lot of people in Tonga have machets, but, unlike some other machete-using nations, Tonga is a place where it is not the custom for the people to use their machetes on each other. TONGA poem in selection of poems on various topics and themes, including America, Japan, Malawi and Guantanamo. This TONGA poem is part of the Genghis Lotus Poetry Collection, a selection of poems free to read online. The collection includes school poems, city poems, nature poems, war poems, cancer poems, death poems, and, additionally, other poems, assorted poems on various topics and themes, this being one of those other poems. Webmaster for this site is poet Hugh Cook, born in Britain, educated in New Zealand, and the author of, amongst other works, the fantasy series Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. |
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Shrill antennae of hurricane
Worry the roof. The spray drifts in the wind. Yesterday, I swam Adrift in the sponge-bath sea. In the laboratory, Clotted blood and faeces — The interminable variations Of human shit. Coral, cowrie, a South-sea sun. The spray drifts; Flies, mosquitoes, Die in the drift. Faeces swirl in the selenite. A coloured boy swings a machete Idly by the roadside, Dark face, white smile. His blood burns in the incinerator, Bubbles and burns. A flare of blazing diesel. Urine, faeces, blood. Colonies of strep and staph Melt and fall to embers. Overcast, undercast, Clouds mounting, mounting. Stormwarning. Stormwarning. A fever scratches my scalp. The boy with the machete smiles And his blood boils. Long chains from a soldier's ear String out under the microscope. My face floats in the water, Breathing the other elements. My hands scan the currents of the reef, Scan murder — And handful of dead things Goes into the boiling water. A fish-stink fills the laboratory. Fungus, fever, blood and shit. The pump in my hands Spreads insecticide, Spreads a fine mesh of death in the wind. In the wind, Nausea, giddiness, blurred vision And liquid shit. Worms writhe in the selenite, White night-crawlers. Atele, Atele, Atele beach, Hollywood-tropical. The radio writhes; Voices bubble underwater, drowning. |
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May be photocopied for classroom use |
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