1. |
Te Kōkī
02:39
|
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I te ata; bird song pours
down this valley.
We walk gently here
on land that belonged to Kāti Ira
who we as Kāti Māmoe
were woven with
in this place of Aro.
In this place of focus
on what is ahead,
on what is behind.
We pull potatoes from our lawn,
fingers soft in the earth.
We live here
on the last patch of native reserve.
Te Āti Awa
now here
while our ancestors have travelled
ā-wairua
to new places
to rest
while we tend
their seedlings
that still grow
for new mouths.
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2. |
Waimāpihi
03:16
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E Kui,
You are a people weaver
Kāti Māmoe,
Kāti Ira,
Ngai Tara,
soar within you.
It makes sense, e Kui
that you bathed in the pool
that holds together
all of these streams,
all of the veins
that flow ever gently
to the sea.
Your name sake trapped now
beneath the first settler street
that became a settler city.
But up in our hills
your waters still flow.
Under our concrete
we hear you
but only
when we press our ears
to the ground.
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3. |
Karaka - Tau
02:00
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E koro,
thank you for telling me
how karaka do not grow by the ocean
by their own hands.
Thank you for showing me
the trees our Kāti Māmoe tupuna planted
in this place.
They still grow strong for us.
I return here
when you have gone.
Deep in this plantation
I watch pīwakawaka
move
between poison berries
unaware
that time has moved
that the waves we can hear
are cars
by the shore.
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4. |
Karaka - Wana
02:44
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Tōku Tūpuna,
you brought the seeds for this place
all the way across the pacific.
in your hand.
You the man of weaving worlds;
Ruawharo te tōhunga
o Takitimu waka.
Now here we are
in a landscape
that deafened settlers
with the rolling of whales.
Massive bodies pressing each other
as if to create worlds.
I stand
feeling the ihi,
the wehi,
the wana
of your children
bubble under my feet
in a space that now
is only this one world
with nothing under its’ waters
but space.
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5. |
Urupā
04:34
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Bring us your dead,
bring us your bodies,
and we will put them to rest
under one blanket of earth.
We can be an urupā,
we can be a house of life,
we can be a cemetery.
So bring us your bodies,
bring us your dead.
and we will put them to rest
under one blanket of earth.
Bring us your cars,
bring us your horns,
and we will take your dead
and we will take your bodies,
all three thousand,
and pull the blanket from over them.
They are wrapped together now
in the arms of lovers
they do not know.
Bring us your bodies,
for to us they are just
the dead.
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6. |
Te Aro Pā
03:58
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Ki te mana whenua
o Taranaki Whānui,
o Ngati Ruanui;
we see you still.
I te ao tāwhito,
you were pushed and pulled
and every time I walk
these red bricked streets
I see them,
moving your boundary lines.
They pressed against you,
firm hands slowly gripping you
tighter and tighter.
Until you let your breath fall
and sold the land from under you.
Now the young dance
on your memory.
How bitter sweet
to move freely
in places
where your homes
were made smaller
and smaller
until they were
gone.
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7. |
Te Tangi Te Keo
01:42
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Whātaitai,
I stand atop Matairangi
where you sung yourself home
as a great bird.
Here in your standing place
I too mourn all the bodies
I no longer live within.
Here a white bird
takes up a piece of sky,
sings its mechanical hum
all the way back to the islands.
Whātaitai,
we travel now not in song
but in sound.
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8. |
Matairangi
02:39
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a new frond unfurling inside you.
Phyllis, you are felt here;
kēhua floating
towards the light
but never making it
before the horns send you
back below ground.
Back Into your bones
found crawling
towards a light that became smaller
and smaller
until for you
the tunnel
had no end.
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9. |
Somes
02:23
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I’m sorry,
but this land is a waiting room.
The stagnating wairua
evaporating to slow mists
in trapped houses
filled with chlorine.
Sulphur clouds
In the air.
This is a rugged purgatory
for what you did,
for what you didn't do.
See the places where the guns sit;
concrete, cold,
empty
and waiting
for a war
that never
arrives.
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10. |
Matiu
04:02
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E pāpā, kei hea koe?
I slashed my breasts
until the rocks were red for you.
You name an island for me.
Isn’t this what all fathers do?
Put their children out to sea,
watch them grow roots into the expanse,
and claim our new spaces for themselves.
Then leave us
to bleed our red soil
into the waters
they use
to leave us
behind.
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11. |
Koukou
01:43
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I te pō; i whakarongo au
ki te tangi o ngā ruru nei.
Koukou, they say.
Koukou.
My tūpuna is named
for this sound.
Perhaps for her wide eyes in the night,
perhaps for the Wai-Koukou where birds would drink
back in the old lands of Kāti Māmoe.
Would she lie on the banks
with snare at the ready
as the birds would circle
round the deep waters
from the Waimāpihi,
from Te Puni,
from the hills of this place?
Or perhaps she would sing
only at night
knowing that her voice
travelled home best
in the black liquid
of night.
Koukou,
I say to her.
Koukou.
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Ruby Solly Wellington, New Zealand
Ruby Solly (Kai Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) is a musician, writer and taonga puoro practitioner living in Pōneke, Aotearoa. Her first album 'Pōneke' explores the hidden histories of Wellington as well as the part that the environment plays within the recording and composing process. ... more
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