The Ikons

Hard, heavy, slow, dark,

Or so I find them, the hands of Te Whaea

Teaching me to die. Some lightness will come later

When the heart has lost its unjust hope

For special treatment. Today I go with a bucket

Over the paddocks of young grass,

So delicate like fronds of maidenhair,

Looking for mushrooms. I find twelve of them,

Most of them little, and some eaten by maggots,

But they’ll do to add to the soup. It’s a long time now

Since the great ikons fell down,

God, Mary, home, sex, poetry,

Whatever one uses as a bridge

To cross the river that only has one beach,

And even one’s name is a way of saying —

‘This gap inside a coat’ — the darkness I call God,

The darkness I call Te Whaea, how can they translate

The blue calm evening sky that plane tunnels through

Like a little wasp, or the bucket in my hand,

Into something else? I go on looking

For mushrooms in the field, and the fist of longing

Punches my heart, until it is too dark to see.

Source: Collected Poems (Oxford University Press, Ltd., 1979)