Moa in the Matukituki Valley: A Cento

Posted: Monday Aug 19, 2024

With the lead-up to National Poetry Day, enjoy this wonderful new poetry video by David Eggleton and Richard Wallis

The poets Thomas Bracken, James K Baxter, RAK Mason, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Cilla McQueen, ARD Fairburn, Allen Curnow, Charles Brasch, Bill Manhire, Elizabeth Smither, Ursula Bethell, Hone Tuwhare, Sam Hunt, Owen Marshall, Denis Glover, Ian Wedde and Brian Turner all provided lines of inspiration.

David and Richard will be performing at our special National Poetry Day Event as part of a stellar line-up this Friday 23 August.

 

Moa in the Matukituki Valley: A Cento

 

Moa's a strange bird, old and out of time,

driven from the bush by the Main Trunk Line.

The world is divided between Moa and the rest.

 

Mountains crouch like tigers, resentful,

and Moa's seeking eyes grow blind,

upstream, wading towards the taniwha.

 

Moa, you are not valued much in Pig Island,

though it admires your walking parody,

and poor saps poeming to the trees imitate your malady.

 

Moa's a good keen citizen, very earnestly digging

in puggy clay at the bottom of the garden for a worm.

Moa cracked a word to get at the inside.

 

Here come the clouds, Moa, puffy like breasts of birds.

Blue's the word for the feeling, Moa, as you levitate,

homing in on living here with your little flock of sheep.  

 

But, Moa, if you feel you need success,

and long for a good address, don't anchor here

in Pig Island, take a ticket for Megalopolis.

 

Moa's solitude: pacing along an empty beach,

creating in his head a plan to get at the wild honey.

Door flaps open like a wing, Moa enters without knocking.

 

Not understood, Moa moves along asunder,

losing the path as the daylight creeps

with shadows of departure. Distance looks Moa's way.

 

Now Moa's there, stoutly bringing up the rear.

Brothers, we who live in darkness, sings Harry,

let us kill Moa, push him off.

 

Beware the Masters of Pig Island, Moa,

and skedaddle for it from Skull Hill:

they'd make if they could a bike seat of your beak.

 

Upon the upland range stride easy, Moa;

surrender to the sky your squawk of anger,

and at the gates of the underworld, pass in peace.

 

David Eggleton