New Zealand, (1926-1972)
Jerusalem Sonnets
- If Ngati-Hiruharama turns out to be no more than
- A child’s dream in the night – well then,
- I have a garden, a bed to lie on,
- And various company – some clattering pigeons roost
- At my back door, and when I meditate in the paddock
- Under the apple tree two healthy dung-smeared pigs
- Strike up a conversation, imagining, I think,
- I am their benefactor – that should be quite enough
- To keep the bowels moving and the mind thankful;
- Yet when the sun rises my delusion hears him shout
- Above the river fog – ‘This is the hill fort
- Of our God; it is called Hiruharama!
- ‘The goat and the opossum will find a home
- Among the rocks, and the river of joy will flow from it!’
Beatrice
- He who goes up a leafy path
- From the abrasive, female town,
- Her breadless, black, stepmothering streets,
- Her holes and ladders of escape,
- Wishes to find the voice of one
- Pure waterfall among the boulders
- In the high bush, pouring light on him,
- Or a woman’s moon-bright, saving face,
- But finds the image he has made,
- One who holds the judgement prism,
- Who sees the swinish bristle sprout
- On his rough jowl in Circe’s cage,
- And will accuse, and will accuse,
- Till he can tear the heart out of his side.
- 1961-1976
A Little Letter to Auckland Students
- O you who dwell in halls of learning,
- I think I smell the porridge burning;
- The Philistines are at the gate,
- The censors of the Welfare State –
- With the jawbone of an ass I’ll whack ’em!
- The story that I wrote for Craccum
- In rhymed octosyllabic verse
- Has fallen under the censor’s curse
- Because Miss Glubb acquired no knowledge
- Of sexual play at Training College,
- And I left in to scare the birds,
- The mildest of four-letter words.
- Though I can’t tell you what goes on
- In the holy hutch of Wellington
- Where Gordon, Garrett, Blaiklock, each,
- Gang-shag the Liberty of Speech
- By saying my beatnik verses can’t
- Be published with the usual grant,
- Yet I can tell you this at least
- Now that the wind is in the East:
- Three moa-grey professors in a row
- Most ably represent the status quo.
- I shall not breathe a word of the agenda
- Of that Committee of which I am a member;
- But let me praise with a high heart
- The burgeoning of Moral Art!
- Those mighty odes by Holyoake,
- That Departmental lightning-stroke
- When eighteen poet-bureaucrats
- Embroidered sonnets on their spats,
- The epics that our lecturers write
- With trembling fingers night by night,
- The ballads by the League of Housewives
- Who, though they lead most moral lives,
- Describe with force the groans and yells
- Of con men in Mount Crawford cells,
- The local songs our wharfies sing
- As they load mutton in a sling –
- When all Pig Island sparks with song
- And all of it is crystal-pure,
- What right have I to call it wrong
- That my coarse-gutted verse should be
- Spaded away like hen-manure?
- O wisdom of the bourgeoisie!
- Should I get drunk or laugh like mad
- When Mrs Grundy buckles on
- The armour of her Galahad?
- The threat to Moral Art has gone
- And I will turn the other cheek;
- The students, sensitive but weak,
- Hearing a poet speak of sex,
- Might buy a tube of Koromex;
- Pig Island sows must guard their young
- Who have not yet the mind mature
- To sift out gold from their own dung;
- Like an empty jug, the Varsity stays pure.
- To Porirua, Avondale,
- I’ll go whene’er my spirits fail,
- And looking round those sparkling wards
- Bless the sweet accident of birth
- That dropped me on Pig Island earth
- Which has no cranks or cops or bawds
- Or drunks or queers, or any sorrow
- Except that we will die tomorrow.
- You Varsity maidens, sweet, refined,
- Who do not sit on a behind
- To answer questions lecturers set
- From Romeo and Juliet,
- O purest in a world that’s pure!
- May you immaculate endure
- Studying Milton’s poetry,
- And when in Holy Matrimony
- To another soul you link your fate,
- May he be a servant of the State,
- A man who’s led a blameless life
- And well trimmed by the gelder’s knife.
- May no vile mildew touch at all
- The blue Picasso on your wall,
- And if at times you wonder why
- You wake at night and want to die,
- Such little doubts you’ll swiftly cancel
- Upon a Marriage Guidance Council.
- But as for me, my doom is plain;
- Outside the window I’ll remain
- With callgirls, jockeys, spades and drunks,
- Who read no Milton in their bunks,
- Describing in barbaric verse
- A non-Platonic universe
- In which Pope Paul or I may be
- The natural son of Cybele,
- Digging in my private dunghill
- Outside, outside the culture mill –
- But soft! These verses will be read
- When the inquisitors are dead.
- 1964-1976
About the Poet:
James Keir Baxter, New Zealand (1926-1972), was a poet, educator and advocate for social reforms in New Zealand. While he wrote poetry and published throughout his lifetime, his alcoholism and frequent shifts of religion and lifestyle were the center of much controversy and speculation.
Called “one of the most precocious poets of the century” whose neglect outside of New Zealand is baffling. Baxter’s writing was affected by his alcoholism. His work drew upon Dylan Thomas and Yeats; then on MacNeice and Lowell, as well as native Māori atavisms.
Baxter’s later years were mostly spent in Jerusalem, a small Māori settlement (known by its Māori transliteration, Hiruharama) on the Whanganui River. Here Baxter lived a sparse existence and made frequent trips to the nearby cities where he worked with the poor and spoke out against what he perceived as a social order that sanctions poverty. [DES-03/18]
Additional information:
- James K. Baxter from NZHistory
- New Zealand Book Council on James K. Baxter