And this man
On the postman’s round will meditate
The horn of Jacob withered at the root
Or quirks of weather. None
Grow old easily. The poem is
A plank laid over the lion’s den.


from ‘Pig Island Letters, 9’

James K. Baxter (1926-1972) is one of the twentieth-century's most remarkable poets, yet he has been too little regarded of outside his native New Zealand. In this innovative selection, Paul Millar, the expert on Baxter, gathers his most powerful and celebrated poems – political, lyrical and spiritual – with some of his more unexpected writings, including previously unpublished work. The book is in four sections, representing the stages from Baxter’s early published work to his last vivid, inspiring and notorious years as a guru of the counter-culture. Each section has a biographical introduction. Notes, a glossary covering words and references unique to New Zealand, and a full bibliography, complete this essential celebration of Baxter’s poetry.


Cover painting: Nigel Brown, Poet as Christ. Reproduced by permission of the artist and the Alex Baird Art Collection, College House, Christchurch, New Zealand. Cover design StephenRaw.com

Contents

Introduction     
Note on the Text    

the 1940s
Beyond the Palisade    
The Mountains    
Love-Lyric III    
Letter to Noel Ginn    
The First Forgotten    
University Song    
Envoi [to 'University Song']    
High Country Weather    
Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness    
Odysseus    
Returned Soldier
The Bay    
Sea Noon    
Let Time be Still    
Tunnel Beach    
Songs of the Desert, 8 ['As we have sown']    
To my Father ['Today, looking at the flowering peach']    
The Cave    
Farmhand    
Letter to Noel Ginn II    
Poem by the Clock Tower, Sumner    
Virginia Lake    
Hart Crane    
Wellington    
Rocket Show    
Wild Bees    
Poem in the Matukituki Valley    

the 1950s
A Rented Room    
The Fallen House    
Cressida, 11: Her Decision    
The Bad Young Man    
The Homecoming    
Never No More    
The Surfman’s Story    
Perseus    
Spring Song    
Elegy at the Year’s End    
Lament for Barney Flanagan    
To my Father ['Dear friend, …']    
The Giant's Grave    
Reflections on a Varsity Career    
Crossing Cook Strait    
Harry Fat and Uncle Sam    
A Rope for Harry Fat    
Husband to Wife    
In Fires of No Return    
By the Dry Cardrona    
At Hokianga    
Pyrrha    
At Akitio    
The Phoenix' Nest    
Song of the Years    
Howrah Bridge    
School Days    
This Indian Morning    
Night in Delhi    
Be Happy in Bed    
Elephanta    
Return to Exile    
Mr Baxter's Evening Liturgy    
Spring Song of a Civil Servant    

the 1960s
The Sixties    
Ballad of Calvary Street    
Evidence at the Witch Trials    
Christchurch 1948    
Winter    
To Our Lady of Perpetual Help    
On the Death of her Body    
Election 1960    
A Dentist’s Window    
To a Samoan Friend    
At Raspberry Hut    
The Rubber Monkey    
A Family Photograph 1939    
The Tree    
The Bureaucrats    
At Serrières    
The Hollow Place    
The Dying Nazi Guard    
The Town under the Sea    
Home Thoughts    
The Cold Hub    
Martyrdom    
The Iron Cradle     
Father to Son    
To Any Young Man who Hears my Verses Read in a
Lecture Room    
An Ode to the Reigning Monarch on the Occasion of
Her Majesty's Visit to Pig Island    
The Axe-Blade    
Shingle Beach Poem    
East Coast Journey    
Pig Island Letters     
The Waves    
Letter to Robert Burns    
Tomcat    
from The Holy Life and Death of Concrete Grady
1    The Ballad of Grady’s Dream    
Thoughts of a Remuera Housewife    
To a Print of Queen Victoria    
Ballad of Nine Jobs    
A Bucket of Blood for a Dollar    
The Old Earth Closet    
The Lion Skin    
On Possessing the Burns Fellowship 1966    
At Aramoana    
The Maori Jesus    
Daughter    
from Words to Lay a Strong Ghost
1    The Party    
12    The Rock    
13    The Flower    
To my Father in Spring    
Travelling to Dunedin    
At Queenstown    
At the Fox Glacier Hotel    
Mother and Son    
At Kuri Bush    
At Brighton Bay    
Fitz Drives Home the Spigot    
Winter River    
Grandfather    
Iron Scythe Song    
The River    
At Naseby    
Reflections at Lowburn Ferry    
Air Flight North    
Winter Poem to my Wife    
Safety        
A Small Ode on Mixed Flatting    
Tangi        
The Rock Woman    
The Fear of Change    
Spring     
Summer 1967    
The Caryatids    
The Doctrine    
Here        
The Black Star    
The Bargain    
Stephanie    
To Patric Carey    
Letter to Sam Hunt    

the jerusalem period
[The book is shut]    
For Hone    
from Ballad of the Junkies and the Fuzz
1    'O star I do not believe in'  
3    'Baron Saturday, baron of the cemeteries'   
4    'On the wall at the bottom of my bed'   
5    'It was necessary of course to invent the fuzz'   
Jerusalem Sonnets: Poems for Colin Durning    
Haere Ra    
The Labyrinth    
Meditation on my Father's Death    
Winter Monologue    
The Ikons    
Song for Sakyamuni    
from He Waiata mo taku Tangi
1    'At the beginning of March'   
He Waiata mo Te Kare    
from Autumn Testament
1    'As I come down the hill'   
2    'Wahi Ngaro, the void'   
4    'Wahi Ngaro, the gap'   
5    'Wahi Ngaro, now the ego'   
6     'The darkness of oneself returns'   
9    'Groper with throats like buckets'   
10    'The mossgrown haloed cross'   
11    'At times when I walk'   
14    'Soon I will go South'   
20    'Somebody in my dream'  
22    'To pray for an easy heart'   
25    'Richard will not come here'   
27    'When I stayed those three months'   
29    'I think the Lord on his axe-chopped cross'   
31    'I tell the girls'  
33    'Mother, your statue'  
36    'This fine windy morning'   
39    'The centre of our dreaming'   
42    'The rata blooms explode'   
44    'This testament, a thing of rags and patches'   
45    'Tomorrow I’ll go down to Wellington'   
46    'After writing for an hour'   
48    'The spider crouching on the ledge'   
Te Whiore o te Kuri    
from Letter to Peter Olds
4    'The revolution doesn’t need guns'   
from Five Sestinas
1    Winter in Jerusalem    
3    The Dark Welcome    
Sestina of the River Road    
Sestina of the Makutu    
The Tiredness of Me and Herakles    
Ode to Auckland    
[Moss on plum branches]    
[A pair of sandals]    

Notes on the Poems    
Māori Glossary     
Glossary of Selected Non-Māori Words    
Select Bibliography    
Index of Titles    
Index of First Lines