Darker Than Night

 

Painting by Colin McCahon

A PAIR OF SANDLES  

 - James K Baxter

A pair of sandals, old black pants

And leather coat – I must go, my friends,

Into the dark, the cold, the first beginning

Where the ribs of the ancestor are the rafters

Of a meeting house – windows broken

And the floor white with bird dung – in there

The ghosts gather who will instruct me

And when the sea mist rises

Te ra rite tonu te Atua –

The sun who is like the Lord

Will warm my bones, and his arrows

Will pierce to the centre of the shapeless clay of the mind.

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