Eggleton, David

New Zealand, (b. 1952)

Moa in the Matukituki Valley: A Cento

  1. Mountains crouch like tigers, resentful,
  2. and Moa’s seeking eyes grow blind,
  3. upstream, wading towards the taniwha.
  4.  
  5. Moa’s a strange bird, old and out of time,
  6. driven from the bush by the Main Trunk Line.
  7. The world is divided between Moa and the rest.
  8.  
  9. Moa, you are not valued much in Pig Island,
  10. though it admires your walking parody,
  11. and poor saps poeming to the trees imitate your malady.
  12.  
  13. Moa’s a good keen citizen, very earnestly digging
  14. in puggy clay at the bottom of the garden for a worm.
  15. Moa cracked a word to get at the inside.
  16.  
  17. Here come the clouds, Moa, puffy like breasts of birds.
  18. Blue’s the word for the feeling, Moa, as you levitate,
  19. homing in on living here with your little flock of sheep.
  20.  
  21. But, Moa, if you feel you need success,
  22. and long for a good address, don’t anchor here
  23. in Pig Island, take a ticket for Megalopolis.
  24.  
  25. Moa’s solitude: pacing along an empty beach,
  26. creating in his head a plan to get at the wild honey.
  27. The door flaps open like a wing, Moa enters without knocking.
  28.  
  29. Not understood, Moa moves along asunder,
  30. losing the path as the daylight creeps
  31. with shadows of departure. Distance looks Moa’s way.
  32.  
  33. Now Moa’s there, stoutly bringing up the rear.
  34. Brothers, we who live in darkness, sings Harry,
  35. let us kill Moa, push him off.
  36.  
  37. Beware the Masters of Pig Island, Moa,
  38. and skedaddle for it from Skull Hill:
  39. they’d make if they could a bike seat of your beak.
  40.  
  41. Upon the upland range stride easy, Moa;
  42. surrender to the sky your squawk of anger,
  43. and at the door of the underworld, pass in peace.

 printed in  Jacket2 (Jacket magazine), a web commentary on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics. ‘Three southern gentlemen poets’ by Ko Vaughan Rapatahana,
September 18, 2015.http://jacket2.org/

Editor’s Note:

In the poem above, Eggleton has included a variety of references to poet James K. Baxter’s works:

  1. “Mountains crouch like tigers” is from the poem The Mountains by James K. Baxter
  2. “Pig Island” refers to Pig Island Letters, Baxter’s sixth poetry collection, published by Oxford University Press in 1966.

Can you find any other intentional references to other works &/or authors? https://www.porkopolis.org/contact/

David Eggleton, New Zealand, (b. 1952), is a poet and an acclaimed reviewer of music, art and literature. He was born in Auckland, of mixed European, Tongan, and Rotuman descent. Eggleton spent his early life in both Fiji and Auckland, eventually dropping out of school to take up performance music and poetryand moving to Dunedin, where he has been based since the 1980s.

As well as his poetry, Eggleton writes extensively on New Zealand art and music, edits New Zealand’s pre-eminent literary journal, Landfall and is an acclaimed literary reviewer.

Also well-known as a performance poet, Eggleto has released several poetry recordings featuring his collaborations with musicians and has been involved in poetry text collaborations with practitioners of a variety of other art forms, from sculpture to fashion design. [DES-11/17]