Arthur,

Louis McNiece wrote once that after five years old work should be left well
alone. I agree with him, but would not be rigid about it. If I do make such
a change I make it as small as possible. In this case I have left out a few
stanzas. I would certainly consider any minor amendments but rewriting it is
out of the question. Anytime I delete stanzas or otherwise change old poems
I always keep the original version so that I can re-instate later if need
be.

Certainly it is a snapshot of time held dear in memory. Poets of whatever
quality have enhanced memories (as said before). It depends on the memories
but in my mind this greatly enhances life; regardless of other benefits.
Most people have rich lives, but if the richness is not remembered then it
is not available to contribute to present consciousness.

Colin


----- Original Message -----
From: "arthur seeley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: newsub/PNG( Colin)


Colin, I can see the difference between your writing then and your writing
now. Interesting, the development that has taken place. I am glad you kept
it and wonder if it means the same to you as mine means to me. A snapshot of
a time personally held dear in my memory. I have been advised to change this
and change that over the years but it remains sacrosanct to me. Like it or
leave it, its mine. Have you the same feeling for this poem?? Thanks for the
read. Arthur.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Colin dewar" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 6:45 PM
Subject: newsub/PNG


Artur's poem on the Patutiva Makkit has stimulated me to pull this one out
from a very low drawer. I won't apologise for the deficiencies in technique
as I had only been writing poems for a few months then. On the other hand it
was before I had developed any funny ideas about what poetry should or
shouldn't be or before I became sceptical about people's motives, in any
country. Was I ever that young? It's an irony-free zone.

I had always liked the paintings of Gauguin but I liked them more after I
had been to this place.

(I intend to remove upper case from the beginning of lines.)

TO THE PEOPLE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA THAT I MET AT ONE MOMENT IN THEIR HISTORY.

Arrival

On tropic hill top
I sit
With warm and sunlit sea
All around.

Bright brown faces:
Children following, laughing,
So vividly
I cannot yet believe it true.

I watch surprised
The leather-heeled, monkey-palmed
Grandmothers
Climb high as birds in palm or tulip tree.

Here the people live
Clamour loud, wave strong,
Not watered down
By other ways.

A Sulphur Crested Cockatoo wings past,
Not glanced once:
Emblem of paradise
Too familiar.

Not by any road
Can body leave this isolated place,
And yet your lucid gaze
Reflects no prison cell.

No seasons here;
All come together
In one unending
Some time tomorrow.

......................................................



Images

Already,
Long before
I leave this place
I have a longing to be back.

As I lie at night
Images return to me,
The day of spear and sparkle,
Changing slowly into dreams.

Today I gathered shells,
Feet swept as I walked in the surf,
So rapt
I quite forgot myself.

Ocean warmth
Whose water is forgetfulness,
Whose salt
Shall drown our tears.

By bliss-giving waves
Buffeted in the surf I sit,
Each blast
A cleansing cataclysm.

I swam for miles today
Reciting lines of long dead men;
Funny how they seem to fit
This palmy, unseen realm.

Here on the sun-warmed sand,
A happy cradle found,
I lie as rocks and waves have lain
Before all life began.

Days are healing here.
The green shoots grow
Around my heart
As if planted long ago.


....................................................


Smiles

In this sunlit world
People wave hello,
No matter whom they meet,
So like satire at first.

It is because
I do not know what to say
For gifts in kindness
That I smile quietly.

It is as if
You have not heard
Of people
Failing to be kind.

I grieve to tell
Of world's beyond your world.
The tale that you ask for
Is beautiful and sad.

Not like your dreams
My world,
No more than yours
Mine.

If outside life
Is quite so good,
What is it that we seek
On shores like these?

You have all the time in the world
And slowly move in short-lived years.
My amble
For you is race along.

So much more restful than I have known.
Every day I work here
Is like a Saturday
At home.

You are mad about fires
And caper round the burning wood,
Its hot dancing flame
All the heart desires.

The beauty of your world
Is like the cricket sound:
Never longed for,
Never heard.

.....................................

Innocence

You helped me gather shells
As we walked on sun-held shore
And neither thought or cared
The reason why.

You showed me how to fish,
Never knowing
How I hunted joy
With net and spear.

All around you laughed and smiled,
The reason never known,
The question
Without answer.

Shadow swift
You slip between the trees,
Much as people have run
On first creation.

Eve consecrate
Finds herself alone
Within the yam
And taro garden.

Some time
You will want more
And I lament the day;
Forbidden fruit that world.


.............................................


Experience

Your footstep in the sand and mine
Erased together
By waves
That sweep and sweep again.

Elder brother writhes
When the sore place is cut.
Little brother watches calmly by the table,
Chewing cau cau*.

I see you cut awake
And still you stay.
You take for granted
So much pain.

Never stops laughing,
My young friend with the ulcerated foot,
Who limps along and smiles,
Who will not stay behind.

With unrequested love I am trusted on the shore,
Your children
Untaught to fear the stranger's voice,
The thought absurd.

Your child
Drags a two foot knife,
Perfectly at home
In a hard  world.

Beside you
I feel laden with belongings
And of a sudden wish
To throw them to the waves.

It is called a watch
This false friend that you touch,
You who only need the heart's time
To measure out the day.

*sweet potato


.......................................................

Religion

Wanting more you move
To mission church from forest green
With never Eden here or there
Or in between.

Your village, one people,
You say.
Your people, one blood
-One blood, one mind.

Your need or greed for more
The missionaries slake
And in giving,
Take.

Your need for health or school they may control.
You cannot have
Until you give
Your soul.

Not brought by church
This simple pleasure,
Your hard and happy life
Was always there.

They have made you ashamed of your sensuality
And bare skin a disease
To be concealed;
They have brought to you their second fall.

And would you be better off
In idol worship
Or hunting heads?
Oh I don't know.

The missionaries
Have come to save your souls they say,
But clear to tell
That you have rescued theirs.

Overheard
The missionaries spoke hate of me behind my back,
Each bitter word falling empty and vain
In this warm, bright land.

Today the children don't come.
I amble more
And wonder if the word is on;
Impossible to tell.

.....................................................


Conservation

Funny how you kill
Without a thought
This creature
That feeds my curiosity.

Funny how
You only know as food
This wonderful animal
Whose life tale I unfold.

So new here
You do not know how it lasts,
The bottle thrown
That bites the floor of the jungle.

You think the jungle huge,
Too big for any axe.
A tiny twig is all it is,
To be outlasted by the grass.

You do not understand
The heart's need for this dark leafy place,
So soon I fear
To fall before the foreign scythe.

For the moment this land
Any need provides,
But numbers grow and grow
Unto the hungry hordes outside.


........................................................

The future

Go to your longed for modern world,
But remember always
That people only dream
Of shores like these.

The people here await with joy
The road to link with other lands.
Is it thought or fancy
That makes me shed a tear or two?

Sometimes copied too precisely
These outside ways,
As if ashamed
Of recent forest life.

Chatting after market
You do not feel it closer come and closer come,
The shops and crime
And walls of brick to blank the sun.

The last place like this,
They say,
That I help spoil
By being.

Bow and arrow,
Bird and taro;
Shrinking island unaware
They do not use them everywhere.

Spirits, devils
In the trees
Cannot survive
The changing breeze.

Hill top
To the hill top seen
But not the swamp land
In between.

Mud and wound,
Bite and sore,
A shame on me
To wish it more.

One day, not near or far
There will be trouble in this land,
But now we walk beside the sea,
Kick pebbles in the sand.


...................................................

The natural man

The people of your highlands
Are harsh I'm told
Amid the rugged hills
And vaporous cold.

Strange to see you
Laugh and leave
The game or gift
Long cherished.

Slashing down with big steel blade,
Brother teasing younger brother.
Smiling Mama scolds the younger,
"He's going to cut you."

In this land
No pun or simile will do.
To raise a laugh
I relate a horrible accident.

On television
The children see
Famine in Ethiopia.
They crease themselves laughing.

One people - one blood, and that is why
That should a driver accidentally crash
For your relative who died
You kill his son or nephew.

The man I see can use a pen or car with ease
But in his garden stand
Unopened tins, suspended packets
To bring the white man's magic.

By the beach
I see the banker stripped true
To dive and dive again
In search of fish.

Like a free-flowing stream,
Your feelings:
You beat each other up,
As if for fun.

I ask for way or distance
And leave without an answer
As if you cannot say
How to measure out the day.

You smash a head or hold a hand
So unselfconsciously;
I cannot find that hidden land.
I cannot understand.

Marital tiff:
He cuts her face with a machete.
She gets him back
With a half brick.

At the hospital
There is the woman crushed by a falling tree.
She has hiked in over three days
With a broken pelvis.

Broken glass on the floor.
"Look out", I cry
To the bare foot man,
But he has already crossed the shards without care.

The patient with TB walks out at lunch time
And takes his emaciated frame
To the top of the kulai* tree.
Ill or not, for him it is the same.

High above the river gorge
The huge tree hangs;
On the highest branch a ribbon,
Tied by children.

Quite without décor
This rough high land
Where people bang together
Like blocks of wood.

Very like a child's these ways,
Innocent, untamed;
Id without super ego,
Is it Peter Pan or Caliban?

Is it this that I am,
These roots the life in me,
This unmoulded energy
The stuff of man?

What shall I say?
Carefree but brutal, generous and cruel.
Hard to summarise the natural man;
Spontaneously present in every sense.

*coconut

.........................................

Hidden world

Something old, unspoken,
The animal in man,
I glimpse
Within your strong and guileless gaze.

Not mine
Your soul.
More unalike than I had guessed
That deep, dark continent.

Not mine your eyes
That see where I do not
The spirits running in the wind,
The devil-peopled trees.

Always far that world;
Unknown to me
The world of myth and magic
That you call home.

Veneer only
Western ways and Western thought;
Yet to soak through
That shady, hidden world.

You still believe in spirits
So beautifully, so forcefully
That the notion of a controlled trial
Stays stuck on my tongue.

What ancient, powerful shapes
Do you see within the trees,
Where I can only tell
Of light and leaf?

Moments pass you never reached for.
Are they never felt,
These minions of eternity,
Or always known?

It is as if you do not use ideas
To understand events;
False sounds to you
That convey no reality.

Openness, simplicity
Deceived me truly;
Never near that world
Behind your cheerful smile.

Mystery world
My finger cannot trace
Beyond the love of life
And simple grace.

Weeks
After coming here
It is only now
That I have left home.

Bearing gifts of fruit
From my trip to the hills
I receive not one word of gratitude.
Gifts here are just the way it's meant to be.

Gifts you gave to me
Might be returned in kind or double measure;
Uncalculated, unasked for,
But expected nonetheless.


.....................................................

On an island

The journey on the waves I see still,
You and I
Poised like supple statues,
Canoe-bound where we will.

We paddle on the sea
On hills of gleaming waves,
By diving bird and fish beheld;
All brilliant as the dawn sky.

What cost
But a smile
To ferry me across
To paradise?

Through the surf,
Upon the shimmering island,
Here I stand,
Dazzled by the birds and sun swept sand.

How I loved that time
As we sat on the warm, palmy isle
With the fish flashing like jewels
In the pool.

So far away was I
From old imperfect things
That I for a lifetime forgot
My own centrality.

Not soft at all
The rocks of this hazy, heavenly isle.
They bruise and cut;
They remind me of mortality.

Day long engrossed,
Yet free as gliding gulls,
You hunt for fish
Along the flashing reef.

I swim back alone,
Through wave and tide,
I who cannot long know
Enchanted isle.

The day is done;
Memory alone denies its passing.
Ever in the grotto shall we run,
With darting lizard, sand and sun.

.....................................................

River journey

Dark brown liquid of life
Oozes serpentine
Its watery way
As the people drink, as the shadows play.

Yes it is dread that I feel
On river journey inwards,
Ever wilder, ever darker
To the heart of things.

Strange the way danger
Sharpens the mind,
Electrifies it with links
To leaf and twig and sound.

Strange the way danger
Stupefies the mind,
Dissolves away
The abstract world of life and time.

Vicious youths come round
Meaning me some harm.
They do not think it,
But I'll take a couple down.

When a village youth appears
The others leave.
He means to assist
Any who venture here.

Changes how we act,
Changes how we are, this land,
The mind in me languishes
Quite redefined.

In so short a time
I have come to love this strange, new thing,
The day that begins
Without knowledge of its ending.

...................................................

Mountain journey

No I do not need
A guide or luggage bearer.
It is my wish
To go alone here.

No it will not take three days
Or a week.
I will sleep on the top
Tonight.

It as if I shed my skin,
Step ever higher and higher
In the thin cool air,
Into a reawakening clearness.

Of all the things I did here
The only thing that surprised you
Was the time I slept
With the frost in my hair.

There are no birds, no plants, no people,
Only sky and rocks at the top.
It is the summit of my life:
Never shall I be so strong again.

They are all gone
The brown people, the sea, my home.
I alone am in this abstract world
Of air and stone.

It is one of the clearest  times in my life,
Lying on this highest place
With the moon vaster than ever in the void,
Glinting on the waves of ice.

I am above
An endless silver sea of cloud.
Far below in the valleys
The life I left behind.

High in the sky
The moon makes more bright than ice
The level domes of cloud,
That rise like pavings to eternal life.

I cannot get away from the moon.
Wherever I go
I am companioned
By that frozen song.

I breakfast on banana and avocado
With the sun awakening the new day,
In this place
Where I cannot stay.

The air is uncomfortably thin.
My chest strains and my head spins.
Umbilical life-line to Earth
Draws me down to the ground.

Back below a family takes me in
With strange generosity.
They do not think it,
But I shall remember them.

.....................................

Departure

In colder climes, in times to come
How may I long
For one hot leaf
From this great steaming jungle.

They symbolise different things here,
The sun not strength but merciless life,
The trees not calm but quite indifferent;
No hard, real world these waters, but natal waves.

Only the moon is still,
In this or any other clime,
And on the sea sheds glimmering, glittering light
As though to worlds beyond my sight.

Never to come again
These palms and stars and the warm wind,
And yet I feel resigned unto the end of time,
Unto the fading of this eve.


 Elective.   P.N.G. September/October  87

My apologies to any Christian readers who may take some of the comments
above as political statement. It was never intended. What had upset the
mssionaries was that I didn't attend church. One had said, "church is at 9"
and I had replied innocently "I'll bear it in mind". I knew that they hated
me for it because they were so impatient to say so that they didn't wait
until I was out of earshot. Thank goodness that I never went around
disputing the missionaries point of view with the locals, though. The local
people stood on the edge of an abyss and I would not want to be the one to
determine how they would fall into the modern world.