28 Maori Battalion Returns:

This is what I recall of the Maori Battalion soldiers returning after WW2. The battalion were a huge part of Maori culture of the post war period and soldiers were welcomed back to every marae in Aotearoa. 

Home At Last

1.

I did not see them go

But neat uniform 

Khaki from neck to ankle wraps

Then polished boots

Beret tilted laconically 

To a victory salute

We're home we're home at last we're home

That's what I saw in 46.

2

What a week that was

Two only another mourned in Crete

They came by taxi to end of road

Then horse and gig to old marae

Hall and lean to kauta

No different from when they left.

3. 

Blind mother saw son with fingers

Another with dimming eyes

Saw handsome shadow

Tears tangi speeches and waiata

Welcomed them and farewelled son in Crete.

4.

In lean to men and boys 

Heard war stories from Greece, Crete, Egypt

Libya, Sicily, Monte Casino, Firenze, 

And Trieste at last.

Yeah they said so casually

We saw action here and there

And R and R in Cairo

And E hoa ma 

28 shot at German planes with rifles

5. 

They even showed us shrapnel wounds

No worse than rugby scars

But

The wounds of heart mind and psyche

At horrors seen

Exploding mayhem nightmare fears

Wounded screams and pain

Machine gun body halved

Remained unsaid

Just laughing soldiers home again at last.

6.

Us kids thought war fun

Cowboy and Indian movie like

Boys on horse back

Cap gun shoot outs after school.

7.

But wounds of war

Aue

Showed much later

Long after keg was drunk

And war songs slurred away

To a silent end.

All Those Stars In Space

I'm no poet. However, I am struck by the euphemisms cultures and traditions like Maori create to explain beliefs in death. Here are some:


Kua wheturangitia:                          He/She has been turned into a star

Kua taka ki tua o te arai:                 The spirit has fallen below the horizon.

Kua ea te Wairua ki tona haerenga: The Spirit is free to go on its journey.


When the late Rowley Habib of Tuwharetoa passed away I thought I'd try to express his passing with euphemisms expressed in poetry. Rowley was an able poet, dramatist and writer of short fiction.

Where The Sun Sets

It's true what we say 

About your star arching gently 

Across  the sky

We watch intently

Will it stop, pause even

But it arcs relentlessly on

Suffer not while you soar

Smooth the pathway light up the dark

Then drop below the horizon

At your appointed time

It matters not whose right

Missionary or us

Our own stars are in their trajectory

In the infinite milky ways of Heaven

One is you another me

And there's the horizon to another world

Beckoning where the sun sets.