To Leeds 1964 [a sequel to last week's 'Zabaione']
[remembering Bill Pearson (1922-2002),
author of 'Coal Flat', 'Fretful Sleepers'
and 'Rifled Sanctuaries']
On overseas sabbatical,
Bill Pearson meets me
(shy, ill-read product of Auckland)
in Edinburgh where Iım now a student.
Iıd re-elect him mentor, but he treats me
(and everyone) always as his equal.
Not being a driver,
he pats my new Cortina,
sits beside me meekly
with a map on his knee.
Southwest through the Borders
we head, keen to look about us
and sense historical links,
though neither he nor I are clear
how to pronounce more than short chunks
of the regionıs ballads we revere:
and what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife,
when ye gang over the sea O?
The worldıs room, let them beg through life,
mither, them never more will I see O.
The Borders grand country where
itıs forested, grand where itıs bare,
here and there reminding Bill
of his South Island (which Iıve yet to see)
which so many Scots,
landless, self-exiled, land-hungry,
found so congenial
for kirk and sheep and oats,
their practical knowledge
and their own Knox College;
Dunedin, Otago, where
lately Billıs friend James K. Baxter
plays both bard and sinner
like a Robert Burns reborn
with Jungian tartan on.
And the ruins a wrecked castle with moat,
hereıs an old abbey open to the sky,
and that stone sheepfold, still on guard
just what Wordsworthıs Michael lingered by.
Somewhere here Walter Scott wrote
those many long books Iıve yet to read.
Further over, off our route, must be
Ayrshire, Robert Burns country;
of him we can just recite
Wee sleekit timırous cowırinı beastie
and something about a daimen-icker ....
His loves and all his bairns so needy...
to think he nearly left for Jamaica!
If itıs Leeds weıre heading for,
soon thereıs a junction to be navigated.
Billıs pilot finger has hesitated
before and does so now;
ignoring his slow advice,
I plunge (I trust) southeast.
I was right but did I offend him?
Darkness falls, rain sets in,
talk flags, wide English
counties slide by featureless.
Threading Leeds, we find the hostel
where next day is the conference.
Dumb at breakfast I admire dozens
of vibrant laughing delegates.
From everywhere in The Commonwealthı
theyıve come to discuss the new literaturesı.
Can they have read enough books?
Could New Zealand interest West Indians?
Billıs paper assumes so, modestly
mapping the region heıs traversed,
inheritance and adaptation,
both as scholar and novelist.
The man from The Guardian
assumes so. The West Indians
discern historical patterns
and living links quite unrehearsed.
Attempting conversation
among these cosmopolitans
from such scattered regions,
I try out my new word: dia-spora;
silence, laughter, then:
sounds like a disease, ratherı
says a poised someone.
Do I conceal my chagrin?
O what a panicıs in my breastie
tongue-tied I lurk in bookshops,
dipping, never finishing a single book:
ballads, Burns, Scott, now a commonwealth
of unmapped new writing, the worldıs room.
So long, Bill, safe home.
My Edinburgh time
expiring, Iıll find somewhere some
congenial situation.
*
Melbourne it turned out to be,
another, prouder postcolonial siteı,
roomy enough but not quite
(failure to adapt?) for me.
Diaspora simply means dispersion.
Forty years on, pensioned off,
still behind with my reading,
and missing Auckland, I seem a case
of one who has mislaid his situation.
So long, Bill. You knew your work and place.
[Max Richards, Melbourne, 5 January 2005]
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