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The Cromwell Gorge

The sun is in its glory. Pitiless
And supreme, its furious visage

Spins in the limitless blue
And turns into powdery dust

The rock floor and shining cliffs
Above an unquiet stream. The hawk

Hangs in a gem-hard sky,
On motionless and lazy pinions

It glides down the hot tired
Corridor of the gorge.

This is the kiln that fired
My shaping mind—a brilliant waste

By wind and rabbit toothed
And honeycombed, an orchard land

Where a child still dreams
Among the time-lost apple trees

While his heels take root
And his forehead wakes into flower.

-Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, 1948