A PAINTING IN AN EXHIBITION
For Bill Hammond
...the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
W. H. Auden,
“Musee des Beaux Arts” (1938)
The
invisible machinery of the forest
falls
silent. We have interrupted
their
wait for the missionaries
to come,
wring their necks, and stuff them.
They are
lotus eaters caught halfway between
men
turning into birds, or birds to men.
Beneath
the dripping cumuli of leaves
they
populate their landscape casually
like
ponga and tī, and like trees, have little say
in what
happens to them. Their eyes reflect
fear
drowned in disdain for the barbarians.
Doubtless
they were living there
in that Chinoiserie Eden pre-Adam’s conquest
erased
all treaties and prior claims, and Eve moved in,
bland
suburbs metastasising over
the
barrows of huia-headed Thoth.
Though
born here,
we’ll
always envy them that.
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