Tony Beyer
Unknown seas
1
after their chromosomes
               had passed through
several generations
deepening the bronze tinge
               of their skin
Odysseus and his crew
arrived on this shore
               (long hull hauled
up the sand shelf
by manpower
               woven sail furled
against the mast)
thus gratifying the ocean god
               and the wind god
whose names change
at each point of longitude
2
in this hemisphere
               the stars occur
at different angles
in arrangements
               supposedly unknown
to the sailor’s eye
yet this is the hemisphere
               of sailors
more water than land
and the stars
               are familiar companions
knotted in their sequences
along lengths of twine
               for navigators’ fingers
to follow in the dark
all the way into the known
3
wairua if anything
               is the spirit
of the sea
italicised for
               emphasis
not foreignness
but to
               take it further
wairua a compound
so deeply annealed
               its constituents
are opaque to us
blood beat
               against the resolute
meniscus of the skin
the tides’ unguarded lapse and swell
4
Tangaroa makes men
               of boys and reduces
men to boys again
the sheer height
               of his mobile mountains
crushes courage and ships
those adrift for months
               at his pleasure
return unrecognisable
eyes having taken on
               his colour
skin embedded with salt
nearly all of them
               after resting
set forth again
knowledgeable about his mercy
5
noir stairwell
               in a pre-quake
South Island hotel
modern and up-to-date
               in 1930
and nothing’s changed since
high-ceilinged bathrooms
               steady tap-drip
worn through to rust
bulbous light switches
               swallowy radio
voice half-heard
rooms
               where seafarers
endure their separation
from Poseidon’s embrace
Willow
lazy late 18th Century
Chinoiserie
three blue men
severally accessorised
on the blue bridge
behind the blue fence
with the tree’s glazed tresses
overhanging them
all an ancient culture meant
to the grim potteries
(Britons had of course
outgrown their woad phase)
from its Victorian heyday
part of a strategy
to balance trade deficits
by pushing opium
to comical little heathens
with pigtails
the fake legend
extended its tendrils
over my deceased aunt’s
beloved dinner ware
a few remnants of which
crated once in straw
conscientiously indestructible
lean on our kitchen shelves
Tony Beyer'sAnchor Stone (Cold Hub Press) is shortlisted for the 2018 New Zealand Book Award for poetry.
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Unknown seas
1
after their chromosomes
               had passed through
several generations
deepening the bronze tinge
               of their skin
Odysseus and his crew
arrived on this shore
               (long hull hauled
up the sand shelf
by manpower
               woven sail furled
against the mast)
thus gratifying the ocean god
               and the wind god
whose names change
at each point of longitude
2
in this hemisphere
               the stars occur
at different angles
in arrangements
               supposedly unknown
to the sailor’s eye
yet this is the hemisphere
               of sailors
more water than land
and the stars
               are familiar companions
knotted in their sequences
along lengths of twine
               for navigators’ fingers
to follow in the dark
all the way into the known
3
wairua if anything
               is the spirit
of the sea
italicised for
               emphasis
not foreignness
but to
               take it further
wairua a compound
so deeply annealed
               its constituents
are opaque to us
blood beat
               against the resolute
meniscus of the skin
the tides’ unguarded lapse and swell
4
Tangaroa makes men
               of boys and reduces
men to boys again
the sheer height
               of his mobile mountains
crushes courage and ships
those adrift for months
               at his pleasure
return unrecognisable
eyes having taken on
               his colour
skin embedded with salt
nearly all of them
               after resting
set forth again
knowledgeable about his mercy
5
noir stairwell
               in a pre-quake
South Island hotel
modern and up-to-date
               in 1930
and nothing’s changed since
high-ceilinged bathrooms
               steady tap-drip
worn through to rust
bulbous light switches
               swallowy radio
voice half-heard
rooms
               where seafarers
endure their separation
from Poseidon’s embrace
Willow
lazy late 18th Century
Chinoiserie
three blue men
severally accessorised
on the blue bridge
behind the blue fence
with the tree’s glazed tresses
overhanging them
all an ancient culture meant
to the grim potteries
(Britons had of course
outgrown their woad phase)
from its Victorian heyday
part of a strategy
to balance trade deficits
by pushing opium
to comical little heathens
with pigtails
the fake legend
extended its tendrils
over my deceased aunt’s
beloved dinner ware
a few remnants of which
crated once in straw
conscientiously indestructible
lean on our kitchen shelves
Tony Beyer'sAnchor Stone (Cold Hub Press) is shortlisted for the 2018 New Zealand Book Award for poetry.